Hugo McCord

Acts 2:38 is so clear that salvation follows baptism it is little wonder that opponents use every stratagem to nullify its force. Part of an essay that attempts to show by the laws of grammar that baptism is not essential has been mailed to me by a Christian in Pennsylvania. He writes, "My grammar is weak. Please explain."

Similarly, about three thousand people, most of whom would also have said, "Our grammar is weak," had no trouble understanding Acts 2:38 when it was first spoken, and they were baptized the same day (Acts 2:41).

The part of the essay that came to me follows:

The essayist writes, "As in English Greek grammar states that the verb AGREES with its subject in PERSON and NUMBER." But he fails to say, regarding Peter’s word hekastos in Acts 2:38, that the "singular is used with pronouns or verbs in the plural" (Bauer-Gingrich-Danker, p. 236), that when hekastos denotes "every one of many," it "is often added appostively to nouns and pronouns in the plural number" (Thayer, p. 192). Many inspired writers used a singular word with plural nouns and pronouns:

The essayist next emphasizes "that the ‘gift of the Holy Ghost’ follows the remission of sins," an accurate statement, but the author then jumps, from the regular, non-miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit that is for every one who repents and is baptized (Acts 2:38), to the irregular, miraculous baptismal gift of the Holy Spirit poured upon Cornelius and his household (Acts 10:44-45). This he does to leave the impression that, since "the ‘gift of the Holy Ghost’ follows the remission of sins," therefore Cornelius received the remission of sins "BEFORE he was water baptized!"

But the author does not tell his readers that the Bible presents two gifts of the Holy Spirit: (1) one that was miraculous and accompannied with tongue talking and restricted to two occurrences (Acts 2:1-4; 10:44-45), and (2) one that was non-miraculous and unaccompanied with tongue talking and bestowed on every one who repents and is baptized from the day of Pentecost, A.D. 30, to the end of the world (Acts 2:39). Since the author does not mention the two gifts of the Holy Spirit, an innocent person listening to his teaching might wonder why he cannot talk in foreign languages.

Furthermore, the author does not tell his readers that a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit is no testimony that one is saved, for Balaam’s donkey received a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit, causing her to talk, not in donkey language, but in a language (Hebrew?) that Balaam could understand (Numbers 22:28f).

Furthermore, the author failed to tell his readers that the angel of the Lord told Cornelius that he would "be saved," not by a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit, but by "words" (Acts 11:14). The promised "words" had not all come from Peter’s mouth (he had only begun "to speak," Acts 11:15) when "the Holy Spirit fell on all them who had heard the word," and they began to "speak with tongues" (Acts 10:44, 46).

The miraculous coming of the Holy Spirit was not a sign of salvation, but only a proof from heaven that God wanted Gentiles to come into the church, along with the Jews (Acts 10:45). Following God’s extraordinary means of converting a racist preacher, Peter told the assembled group the final "words" by which they would be "saved": "he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord" (Acts 10:48). The baptisms completed God’s plan of salvation for the Gentiles (faith in Jesus, repentance, baptism in water, Acts 10:43; 11:18; 10:47-48), as well as for the Jews (Acts 2:36, 38).

The author of the essay next says it is "faulty teaching" to believe "that the word ‘for’(KJV for eis) as used in Acts 2:38 MUST mean ‘in order to obtain.’" Surely he would not call Joseph Henry Thayer a "faulty" teacher, but Thayer said that the meaning of eis in Acts 2:38 is "to obtain the forgiveness of sins" (LEXICON, p. 94). Surely the author of the essay would not call Walter Bauer-Wilbur Gingrich-Frederick Danker "faulty" teachers, but they wrote that the meaning of eis in Acts 2:38 is "so that sins might be forgiven" (LEXICON, p. 229).

The author of the essay, in order to sustain his position that "for" in Acts 2:38 (KJV) means "because of," he cites Jesus’ commandment to a man whom Jesus had healed of his leprosy, to show himself to a priest "and offer FOR thy cleansing, as Moses commanded" (Luke 5:14). In this example "FOR" does mean "because of," but that does not change the meaning of "for" in Acts 2:38: "to obtain the forgiveness of sins" (Thayer, p. 94).

"For" is an ambiguous word in English, meaning either "because of" or "in order to." Back of "for" in Luke 5:14 is peri, not the eis of Acts 2:38. Whereas "for" in English can point backward or forward, eis always points forward. "For" pointing backward in Matthew 25:8 and in Revelation 16:10 is translated, not from eis, but from hoti and ek: "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out" and "they gnawed their tongues for pain." But back of the word "for" in Acts 27:34 and in Matthew 26:12 is eis: "I urge you to take some food, for it will help you to survive" (NRSV) and "By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial" (NRSV). Accordingly, the context (sinners crying out for relief after they realized they had crucified the Messiah), eliminates any idea in Acts 2:38 that they were not told to be baptized because their sins were gone.

Every word in the Bible is the right word in the right place. If the Holy Spirit wanted to tell the sinners in Acts 2:38 that they already had been saved, he would have put the word dia, "on account of," "because of," on Peter’s lips. Instead, he put the word eis, "in order to," "unto," on his lips, a preposition that never looks backward.

John the Baptist refused to baptize people unless they had repented ("Show proof that you have changed your hearts," Matthew 3:8), but in Matthew 3:11 his focus was not on their past but their subsequent life of continuing penitence: "I baptize you in water unto [eis] repentance." If he was talking about their past life, he would have said, "I baptize you because [dia] you have repented.

Also, though the men of Nineveh repented because of Jonah’s preaching, that was not the focus of Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:41 and in Luke 11:32:

Jesus, like John, knew the difference between dia and eis. Jesus was saying that the Ninevites had changed their lives at the preaching of Jonah, or, more vividly, into what Jonah had demanded. The backward action had to precede, to quit their sins, but Jesus was talking about their subsequent action after Jonah had left town. J. W. McGarvey wrote that the Ninevites