Friday, April 15, 2016
Acts 2:38-39 Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call."
THE SPOILS OF VICTORY -- REPENTANCE AND BAPTISM
During Holy Week, Jesus made several promises to His disciples. One of the most important was that He would send them the Holy Spirit after He left the world. Without the victory of the resurrection, this promise would have fallen short. But, because Christ conquered the grave, the Holy Spirit did come to the Church on Pentecost Sunday, and He has stayed with it ever since. In his message that day, Peter mentions two specific spoils of Christ's victory that the Church was blessed to receive--repentance and baptism.
We are familiar with these gifts from other parts the Bible and we know them well as essential to the Christian faith. However, there's a specific reason that they were so important to the early Church. Repentance and baptism are the foundation of establishing the Church, or what we often call mission work. Today, many churches are well-established and have been operating for decades. The early Church was heavily involved with spreading the Gospel to those who had never heard it before, and therefore repentance and baptism were especially important to them.
Although we may not have as many mission opportunities among those who have never heard the truth before, we should remember how vital repentance and baptism are to the work of God's kingdom. Christ verified the power of these precious gifts through His victory for the express reason that we would use them to build His Church. In our modern age of using various new methods to share God's Word, we can't allow the importance of repentance and baptism to be overshadowed.
