Repentance and Baptism: More Than Fire Insurance

Every evangelistic tract I have ever laid eyes upon focused on answering a question about salvation. Namely, how does a person get saved from sin and God’s eternal judgment? Now if a person has never committed their life to Jesus and is experiencing an existential crisis due to some moral failure, the question might address their crisis. The problem is that this view of salvation  is too narrow.

In Acts, the apostles were not thinking about how they would be saved from sin and judgment. They wanted to know when Jesus was going to restore the kingdom to Israel (1:8). So it seems that when the pious Israelites at Pentecost realized that the Jesus they helped crucify had been raised from death by God and exalted as Lord and Messiah, their question about what they must do (2:37) was a kingdom question. That is, they weren’t just asking how could they now be forgiven and spared from God’s judgment but now that God is restoring his kingdom in Jesus the Messiah, how could they participate in the kingdom?

The question of how do we participate in the kingdom is much broader than just how do we get saved from sin and judgment. Yes, such participation includes salvation from sin and judgment but the question of salvation is as much about the life we are being saved to rather than just what we are saved from. The point is that salvation is so much more than just escaping eternal damnation! So here the summons to repentance and baptism again:

“Change your hearts and lives [repentance]. Each one of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” – Acts 2:38

Now despite the countless debates about the meaning of “for the forgiveness of sins” and when is a person “saved” in relation to baptism, such a focus is too narrow. What makes this summons to repentance and baptism different is that it is 1) in the name of Jesus Christ, and 2) associated with the promise of receiving the Holy Spirit. That makes sense because the entire Pentecost sermon was a declaration that God is now pouring his Spirit out on all people now that he has raised Jesus from death and exalted him as the Lord and Messiah.

The question we must ask in Acts chapter two is how do we participate in the kingdom that God is restoring? The answer is repentance and baptism because in doing so — in turning away from the old life that is passing and to the new life as we learn to live as followers of Jesus [repentance] and surrender our lives in submission to King Jesus [baptism] — we are immersed into a new life where we live under the kingdom-reign of God where we are then formed and animated by the Spirit to live as the church of Jesus Christ. This is the way we are summoned to participate because neither repentance nor baptism is a one-and-done transaction but an immersion into a transformative life as the people of God.

I’m going to be blunt here but it’s something that needs to be said. Repentance and baptism is about so much more than “fire insurance” to escape whatever hell we think awaits. If we truly want to participate in the eternal kingdom of God, then we must learn what it means to live a life of repentance and baptism. And if we don’t, we really haven’t repented and the baptism we received has become nothing more than a cleansing bath.

God is restoring the kingdom. That’s why he has poured out the Spirit and exalted Jesus to his right side as the Lord and Messiah but the kingdom is not appearing in some magical hocus-pocus manner. The kingdom appears as we, who profess our faith in Jesus as Lord and Messiah, live a life that is form by the Spirit as an embodiment of cruciform-character and kingdom-oriented life Jesus lived. So our summons to repentance and baptism is an invitation to receive the Spirit and be transformed in the way of Jesus as we live under his reign.