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NASB | Acts 2:38 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. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, "Repent [change your old way of thinking, turn from your sinful ways, accept and follow Jesus as the Messiah] and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ because of the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. |
Subject: Can God save us the way HE WANTS TOO? |
Bible Note: For someone that belongs to a church that insists that "one need look only to the Bible," you certainly are employing secondary sources a lot! Not that I have a problem with that; it just seems that if I were to quote Augustine or Luther or Calvin, you would immediately make the claim that "only the Bible counts." Anyhow, you wrote: "1. While it is true that the passages referenced (Eph. 2:8; Rom. 3:22-27) do not explicitly mention baptism, neither do they contain any allusion to repentance. Are we to assume that repentance is not required for redemption? Surely not." Repentance is a result of regeneration, just as saving faith is. Repentance always accompanies saving faith. One might call them two sides of the same coin, as repentance is turning away from reliance upon self, and faith is turning toward God, relying on Christ's completed work on the cross alone. Neither is an external action, but an exercise of the will, a change in disposition, that will result in external actions (works). Neither repentance nor faith should be classified as "works." We are not justified by repentance, nor baptism; we are justified by faith alone. Repentance accompanies faith and baptism follows (at least at the start of the church in Acts 2). However, other passages are expressly clear that it is faith, NOT works that saves. As your source put it, "No single statement or obscure passage of one book can be allowed to set aside a doctrine which is clearly established by many passages." Ephesians 2:8-10 is pretty clear. Nothing obscure about it. However, I prefer looking at Romans 4:1-5 as an even clearer picture. Paul is demonstrating how we are not saved by faith, not works, and he uses Abraham as his example to which we should compare our own salvation. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Not "Abraham did this and than and then was declared righteous." We can be pretty certain that he was declared righteous without baptism. Yes, baptism was not established as a sacrament until the Great Commission, but we must keep in mind here that Paul is saying unequivocally in Romans 4 that our salvation is the same as Abraham's (and he cites David, another unbaptized believer, as well). I believed God, and it was credited to me as righteousness. That was shown forth in my baptism and my repentance, just as Abraham's belief was demonstrated in his obedience. But faith and obedient works, while always linked, must never be confused with one another. You quoted: '2. It is rarely the case that a single context will totally exhaust the biblical material on a particular theme. It is the ?sum? of the truth that counts (Psa. 119:160), not an isolated text, that may focus upon a limited point of emphasis.' But you still have to address the fact that passages like Ephesians directly state that we are saved by grace through faith, and that NOT of works. It is not that works are not mentioned; they are specifically EXCLUDED by the text. There is no reasonable way that we can add in any work and say that we are saved by it, because Paul headed that notion off at the pass completely and totally. It is God's grace through faith, nothing else, that is the source of our salvation. --Joe! |