Transcript

ANNOUNCER: On the day of Pentecost when at least 3,000 Jews were together, were there any Gentiles there and did the Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit on that day? What does the book of Acts and its transitional nature say about this issue? Thank you for joining us today, friend. This is Grace in Focus. We are a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. And you can learn more about us at our website, faithalone.org. We’d love for you to subscribe to our magazine, also called Grace in Focus. It is a free subscription. All you have to do is sign up for it. Free in the sense that if you live in the 48 contiguous United States, it’s sent to you free. Anywhere else in the world, it’s still free, but you have to pay the postage. Find out more, get subscribed at faithalone.org.

Now with today’s question and answer discussion here are Bob Wilkin and Steve Elkins. 

BOB: Well Steve, I believe we have a question from Ruth. 

STEVE: She asked, on the day of Pentecost, is it possible that there were Jewish believers? She says possibly the man possessed by Legion, but we have reason to think he might have been a Gentile in the region. 

BOB: Yeah, Gadarene demoniac, that was Gedara and Gedara was this Decapolis region that had a lot of Gentiles in it. So he might have been Jewish, he might have been Gentile. 

STEVE: That’s right. And then she mentions the Gentile believer like the Syro-Phoenician woman. Not that many Gentiles, but they are really brought forth in the Gospels like the Centurion. “I’ve not seen such great faith in all Israel.” And in Matthew, the only two people He says that they have great faith are both Gentiles. Isn’t that interesting?

BOB: And there are also Samaritans that come to faith in John 4, the woman at the well, and the people that were there, you’ve got those. And I think her question is—

STEVE: If they weren’t present on the day of Pentecost, when did they get the Holy Spirit? And in fact, another way we might say it is, did any of these Old Testament-type believers get the Holy Spirit without being baptized as we know is what generally happened at the beginning of Acts?

BOB: Yeah, because in Acts 2:38, what we find is he said, well, do you have Acts 2:38 there? Maybe you could read it, but he says, repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord and you receive—

STEVE: Yes. He’s, Peter’s already preached a great Pentecostal sermon. And then the people cry out, “What should we then do?” And that indicates they believed his message about Jesus. And then Peter said to them, “Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission (or forgiveness) of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

BOB: Okay. So there’s two things. These people and—Lanny Thomas Tanton in an article we have at faithalone.org

STEVE: It’s excellent. 

BOB: It really is. He’s a former Church of Christ evangelist. He wrote his master’s thesis at Dallas Seminary on Acts 2:38, and Acts 22:16, and we have two articles in our journal. You can check those out. And he argues that what Peter’s talking to Palestinian Jews who were present at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and they were part of the group that was crying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him,” so they were guilty of the blood of Christ. And what Lanny Tanton argues, and Zane Hodges also argues this in some of his writings, and I do as well in some of my writings, is that these people were already born again. They already believed when they say, “Brethren, what must we do?” It says they were cut to the heart.

STEVE: That’s right.

BOB: So they believed they had crucified the Messiah. They now realized they were wrong, and they now realized that what Jesus had said, that He believes who in Me has everlasting life, is true. So they knew that they had everlasting life, but what they needed to know is what must we do in order to escape our great guilt. Notice it’s not like Acts 16:30. What must I do to be saved? Or Acts 16:31, but in this case, this is what should we do to escape our guilt?

STEVE: It’s exactly what Paul, as a believer, as he sees the light on the Damascus Road, he says the very same thing to Jesus. He says, what should I do? The very same construction.

BOB: Right. And Saul was already born again at that point when he says this because he now believes that this is the Lord Jesus Christ who he’s been persecuting and he believes the message. Every time he gives his testimony, this is when he’s born again. Not three days later when Ananias tells him to arise and be baptized, wash away your sins, calling on the Lord. 

STEVE: Exactly. Just like these Palestinian Jews in chapter two, what does Jesus tell Paul to do? Go to Ananias’ house on a street called Straight and be baptized and Ananias bravely does that. 

BOB: What Ruth is asking is extremely complicated. In this sense, until Acts chapter 10, the church appears to be primarily or almost exclusively Jewish. Until Cornelius and his household come to faith, what you have is—when churches would meet in Jerusalem or in Rome or in other cities, these were Jewish believers. And we don’t know if there were Gentiles in their midst prior to Cornelius’ household coming to faith. There were Gentiles who were born again, no question. The question is, what about all of the people who came to faith during the ministry of Jesus, who were Samaritans or Gentiles, or maybe they were Jews, but they weren’t part of the group that were saying “Crucify Him, crucify Him”? Did they receive the Spirit without undergoing Christian baptism, without repentance? Take the twelve, for example. Did the twelve apostles receive the Spirit on the day of Pentecost before or without undergoing Christian baptism? The answer would be yes, right? 

STEVE: Yeah, they had the Spirit, but not in the same sense as those who are baptized en christo by the Holy Spirit. That’s a little different thing. The baptism and permanent indwelling and so forth that happens uniquely with Christian baptism. 

BOB: Okay, but let’s talk about that. Jesus said to the eleven, and then they gained Matthias in Acts 1. He says, the Holy Spirit has been with you, but He will be in you. And then He said, ten days before Pentecost, you will receive the Holy Spirit not many days from now. They received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, right? 

STEVE: Right.

BOB: But they didn’t have to be baptized. In fact, there’s no indication in Acts 2 that the twelve underwent Christian baptism, but what you have, there were two things that these new believers needed. They needed forgiveness, and they needed the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

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BOB: I remember from the word RIBS—we learned lots of little [unintelligible] in seminary—and this one was regeneration, indwelling, baptizing, and sealing. Well, Old Testament believers got the R and the S. They were regenerated, they were sealed. These people on the day of Pentecost were regenerated and sealed, but they were not yet indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and they were not yet baptized into the body of Christ. That occurred when they underwent Christian baptism, and there were like 3,000 of them, right?

But we learned that in Acts chapter 8, there are a group of Samaritans who come to faith in the ministry of Philip the Evangelist, and when do they receive the Spirit? 

STEVE: Well, after their hands were laid on them.

BOB: So they’re born again and baptized, and it’s not until several days later that Peter and John come and lay hands on them, and that’s when they receive the Spirit.

STEVE: And the same in Acts 19, which were the Ephesian believers, Paul asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, we have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said to them, into what then were you baptized, into John’s baptism.” Then Paul explained it in case they didn’t know, “John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on Him, (Jesus), who would come after him.” That is, on Christ Jesus. “When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus,” but they don’t get the Spirit just yet. The next verse says, “And when Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.”

BOB: So notice here, he says, 

STEVE: “We have not so much as heard that there was a Holy Spirit.” 

BOB: Yeah, of course, they were evidently not Trinitarian. They believed in God the Father and God the Son. But in addition, we find out that these are born again people, but they have not yet received the Spirit. And in order to do that, they have to be baptized. So they’re baptized, then Paul lays hands on them and they receive the Spirit. 

So in answer to Ruth’s question, it’s likely that there were people throughout the Roman Empire who received the Holy Spirit at that moment. In other words, they weren’t present when he’s preaching here and they were in Decapolis or they were in some other country and they were Gentiles or Samaritans or Hellenistic Jews, they received the Spirit. But among those who were present at that moment, most of the people who were present had to be baptized in order to receive the Spirit. 

But at least the twelve didn’t. And probably there were a few other Jews who weren’t part of the people who were saying, “Crucifiy Him, crucify Him”. Remember, there were 120 in the upper room, right? that were awaiting Christ. So I would assume those 120 didn’t need to undergo Christian baptism in order to receive the Spirit. And it’s an open question as to whether the disciples ever underwent Christian baptism. Maybe they baptized or the 120. We don’t know.

STEVE: And Bob, you have an interesting view, I think. It’s possible they were baptized by Jesus himself, because there’s a period where Jesus is baptizing more than John.

BOB: In John chapter four.

STEVE: And so even if they were baptized by Jesus, they don’t have the Spirit in the sense that’s going to happen after the day of Pentecost. 

BOB: Right, and keep this in mind too, when Jesus baptized somebody, that wasn’t Christian baptism. The church didn’t exist until Acts chapter two. So you can’t have Christian baptism until Acts chapter two. So even if Jesus personally baptized the twelve, that wasn’t Christian baptism.

STEVE: Something else that we have to bring out is the transitional nature of Acts.

BOB: Absolutely.

STEVE: And so it’s dangerous to try and build too many doctrines on it. We need to build our doctrines, especially on the epistles and what Jesus said and so forth. But what we do know is, sometime after Acts 10, Gentiles and Jews both at the moment of Spirit baptism, which happens at the moment of faith, they are baptized once and for all into the body of Christ. And they’re sealed by the Spirit. They have the Spirit in this New Testament Christian sense. 

BOB: And we know they start the Christian life with the forgiveness of sins, because Acts 10:43, Peter says, “Whoever believes in Him receives the forgiveness of sins.” And Peter was going to go on and talk about everlasting life, etc., but they already knew, Acts 11:14, that he was going to tell them words by which they must be saved. So when they heard “Whoever believes in Him receives the forgiveness of sins”, they understood that along with that came everlasting life and salvation. And so they believed and they were forgiven. They didn’t have to be baptized to be forgiven, baptized to receive the Spirit.

Most dispensationalists would say, from Acts 10 forward, everybody who believed, at that moment, both was forgiven and received the Spirit. And by the way, it’s important to recognize the forgiveness in Acts 10:43 means they started the Christian life with a clean slate. They don’t need to make a list of all their pre-conversion sins, right? You start in fellowship with God. Now, 1 John 1:9 is for ongoing forgiveness.

STEVE: Can you imagine if we had to confess our sins in that sense to become a Christian?

BOB: You know what? We’d have nervous breakdowns. It’d be a mess. 

STEVE: We could never know if you confessed them all. 

BOB: Well, you obviously wouldn’t. Thanks so much, Ruth. Great question. And in the meantime, let’s all keep grace in focus. Amen. 

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And on our next episode, the great white throne judgment and the judgment seat of Christ. When do they happen? Join us and find out. Until then, let’s keep grace in focus.