Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We’re reading the Navigators Bible Reading Plan together. And tomorrow we read Acts 22, a chapter where Paul recounts for us his dramatic conversion experience — his blindingly dramatic conversion experience. In the story, we’re introduced to a devout and godly Christian man named Ananias, who approached the recently blinded Saul (now named Paul) and restored his sight to him, or told him it would be restored soon. Then Ananias told Paul in verse 16, “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” Water baptism and sin-washing are connected.

Likewise, we have forty questions in the inbox about Acts 2:38. There in the text, a bunch of seekers have gathered to hear Peter say to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And three thousand people repent and are baptized. An amazing sight — and yet another text that appears to put water baptism in the moment of forgiveness or conversion. So, dozens of listeners have written in to basically ask, based on Acts 2:38 and Acts 22:12–16, this same essential question: Pastor John, are we saved after water baptism, before water baptism, or in water baptism?

I would first answer by making the question more precise. Are we justified before, in, or after baptism? Are we united to Christ, do we become one with Christ and God becomes 100 percent for us, before, in, or after baptism? Because in the New Testament, the word saved is used for what happens before, in, and after baptism:

Ephesians 2:8: “[We] have been saved.”
1 Corinthians 1:18: “[We] are being saved.”
Romans 13:11: “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.”

So, being saved happened before, is happening now, and will happen finally in the future.

The word salvation in the New Testament is broad and includes pieces of salvation. And what’s really being asked is, “When did it all start — the first moment of union with Christ, the moment of justification (which is not a process like sanctification is but decisive)?” “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). When did that start? At what point does God count us a child — not a child of wrath, which we all are by nature (Ephesians 2:3), but a child of God, so that from that point on, he is 100 percent for us with no wrath? When did that happen? What was the decisive means that brought it about, that united us to Christ, that justified us?

By Faith Apart from Water

Let me give my answer from texts and then show how that point relates to baptism.

Romans 3:28: “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.”
Romans 4:5: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Acts 13:38–39: “Through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed [or justified] from everything from which you could not be [justified] by the law of Moses.”

And on and on and on I could go. I had a bunch of others, and I thought for time’s sake I’d just leave them out.

“Baptism is the outward expression of calling on the name of the Lord in faith.”

So, here’s my inference from those texts (and many others like them): justification — being put right with God by union with Christ in the divine miracle of conversion and new birth — that point is by faith, and faith alone, on our part. God uses faith as the sole instrument of union with Christ and thus counts us righteous and becomes 100 percent for us in the instant that we have faith in Jesus.

That’s my answer. And now the question is, “Okay, how do you talk about baptism? And how do you understand those texts that were quoted that seemed to connect baptism to that act, that beginning?” So, let me give some answers to that.

Sign of Righteousness

The first thing I would say is that the thief on the cross was told by Jesus that that very day he would be with him in paradise. He was not baptized. I know he’s a special case — I don’t think you build a theology of baptism on the thief on the cross. But one thing it says is that baptism is not an absolute necessity, because it wasn’t in his case.

Here’s the second thing I would say. Paul treats baptism as an expression of faith so that the decisive act that unites us to Christ is the faith, and it is expressed outwardly in baptism. Here’s a very key text for me. When I went to Germany, I was a lone Baptist in a den of Lutheran lions. They were loving lions — they just licked me; they didn’t eat me. But they did not approve of what I believed. And I remember taking a retreat with twelve little cubs and one big doctor father named Leonhard Goppelt. And we were talking about baptism the whole weekend. And this was my text; this was my text that I put up. This is Colossians 2:11–12:

In him [in Christ] also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

So, the burial with Christ in the water and the rising with Christ out of the water, it seems to me (from that text), are not what unites you to Christ. That is, the going under the water, the coming up out of the water — that’s not what unites you to Christ. It is “through faith” that you are decisively united to Christ.

And here’s an interesting analogy, since circumcision was brought into the picture there, and there’s kind of an image of circumcision in Colossians 2. If you go to Romans 4:11, Paul says,

[Abraham] received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.

So, if you just take the analogy — and that’s all it is; it’s just an analogy between baptism and circumcision — then this text would say that baptism is a sign of a righteousness that we have before we are baptized, because we have it through faith and through union with Christ.

Calling and Washing

Then we go to the relevant texts in Acts that the questioner raised, like Acts 22:16: “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins.” Now, if you stopped right there, you’d say, “Well, there it is: the water is the forgiving agent.” But that’s not where you stop. It says, “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” So, the sense (I think) is the same: baptism is the outward expression of calling on the name of the Lord in faith. It’s not the water that effects our justification or union with Christ. The water is a picture of the cleansing, but the faith in the heart, the call on the Lord from faith, is what unites us and forgives us.

And now, that’s the meaning that 1 Peter 3:21 actually picks up on when it says, in relationship to the flood and Noah’s rescue through the ark, through the water, “Baptism, which corresponds to this” — that is, the salvation of Noah’s family in the ark and the flood — “now saves you.” That’s probably the clearest text for those who want to say that baptism is salvific, that it actually does the saving. It says, “Baptism . . . saves you.”

And then immediately, as though he knows he said something almost heretical, because it would so compromise justification by faith, he says, “. . . not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal” — so now we’re back to this call issue: “Wash away your sins, calling on his name” — “as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” In other words, it’s the call of faith from the heart, not the water. And he explicitly says, “not [the] removal of dirt from the body.” In other words, “It’s not the actual functioning of the water that does the saving, even though I just said, ‘Baptism saves you.’ What I mean is that this outward act signifies an appeal to God that’s coming from the heart, and it’s that faith that saves.”

“God uses faith as the sole instrument of union with Christ.”

So, when John the Baptist (or Mark) calls his baptism “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), it probably means “a baptism signifying repentance, which brings forgiveness.” Because repentance is simply the way of describing the change of mind that gives rise to faith.

‘Repent and Be Baptized’

Now, here’s one last important text they’re raising. In fact, this is where you begin. Acts 2:38: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” So, it looks like this: repent (condition number one), be baptized (condition number two), and forgiveness will be given to you. And I’ve been arguing (because I think so many texts teach it) that, no, repentance and faith as one piece are what obtains forgiveness, not the baptism.

So, what, you disagree with this text, Piper? Who do you think you are? And I think that text should be read something like this (and I remember seeing this years ago and then finding it other places). Suppose, Tony, you want to go from Phoenix to LA on the train, and it’s about to leave, and I say, “Grab your hat and run or you’ll miss the train.” Now, I just gave you two commands like Peter gave two commands: “Repent and be baptized.” But only one of them is a cause of getting to the train on time — namely, running. But I said, “Grab your hat.” Grabbing your hat is an accompanying act, not a causative one. It may be very important. There may be all kinds of reasons why you should have a hat. Why did you tell him to grab a hat? Well, I’ve got my reasons. But grabbing the hat does not help you in the least to get on the train on time.

Now, that’s the way I think we should hear Peter when he says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you, and make the train of forgiveness.” You get on the train of forgiveness if you repent and are baptized. And the repentance, the change of mind that includes faith, gets you to the train. And baptism is important — important for all kinds of reasons — but it’s not causative in the same way that repentance is.

So, here’s my bottom-line answer to the question: Faith precedes baptism (that’s why I’m a Baptist) and is operative in baptism. So, we are justified at the very first act of genuine saving faith in Christ, and then baptism follows (and preferably would follow soon) as an outward expression of that inward reality.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Tomorrow, we come to a text in our Bible reading that should compel all of us to be driven by gospel-sized ambition in this life. The text is Acts 20:24. We’ve already looked at it — and this huge aspiration — from a couple different angles, as you can see in the APJ book on pages 69–70, in episodes looking specifically at following our heart and chasing after ambitious careers in this world. How do we do big ambition well, to glorify God in our aspirations?

This glorious text comes in Paul’s final, parting words to the beloved Ephesian elders in Acts 20:17–38, a deeply moving account that we read together tomorrow, and a text on the mind of a listener named Derek. “Pastor John, hello! I graduate from seminary this spring, and as I prepare for full-time ministry, I want to better understand Paul’s claims in Acts 20:24 when he says, ‘I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.’ For your life as a pastor, what do you take from this text? What did this Pauline conviction for the gospel over life look like — and feel like — for you?”

I love this text, Acts 20:24. And it’s one of the reasons that I love the apostle Paul. So, I’m happy to meditate on it again, as I have so often over the years.

Life Is Better Lost Than Wasted

Way back when I wrote the book Don’t Waste Your Life, over twenty years ago, this text, among others, had taken hold of me and was driving my thinking, my feeling. In fact, when I preached on this text at a university some years ago, my summary statement of the text was “better to lose your life than to waste it.” I think that’s exactly what Paul is saying in this verse: better to lose your life than to waste it.

So, let me quote the text with the two preceding verses (Acts 20:22–23) and then try to answer the question more specifically about its impact on my ministry. “And now, behold,” Paul says — and he’s speaking to the Ephesian elders as he says farewell to them, never to see them again. “And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life” — this is Acts 20:24 now — “of any value nor as precious to myself, if only” — this is the one sense in which he does value his life — “I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Which I paraphrase, “Better to lose your life than to waste it.”

The Power of a Precious Passage

Now, Derek is asking what I take from this text for pastoral ministry. Or, more specifically, what did it look like or feel like for me to embrace this text in my ministry?

1. Return to the Point

I felt the poignancy of this text because it is among the last words Paul speaks to his friends that he’ll never see again in this life, as far as he knows. At the end of the passage, Acts 20:37–38, it says, “There was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again.”

“Better to lose your life than to waste it.”

So, when I see a Christian pastor or missionary or a father taking leave of his family or taking leave of a church or a people for the last time, knowing they’ll never see each other again in this life, I listen. I listen because I expect something profound and moving, something that tries to sum up what’s been the point of it all. And I want to know what the point of it all is. I want to know what the point of life is, the point of ministry, the point of the universe, which is exactly what we get in this verse. That’s the first thing.

2. Escape Comfort

I have felt, as I have returned to this text again and again, an urgent desire to renounce every distraction and follow Jesus and escape the materialistic forces of the American dream, and the dangers of being rich, and the temptations of comfort and security, and the deadening effects of worldliness that strip a pastor of his power. “I do not count my life of any value nor as precious to myself,” he says, “except for one thing.” And it isn’t prosperity or comfort or ease or security in this world. “I have been given a race to run and a ministry to perform.”

It’s like a marathon. I’m on it. This is why I live. This is what my life means. Finish the race. Fulfill the ministry. Don’t stop. Don’t leave the course. Don’t get sidetracked. Don’t go backward. If you do, your life will be wasted. Paul really believed Psalm 63:3: the steadfast love of the Lord “is better than life.” There is a path of life that leads to the everlasting enjoyment of the steadfast love of God. Better to lose your life than to go off that path. That’s Acts 20:24.

3. Lean on the Spirit

This text has always felt like a miraculous work of the Spirit, not an accomplishment. Acts 20:22 says, “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit.” Paul wasn’t a self-reliant hero. He was a walking miracle. If Acts 20:24 happens in your life, that’s what it’s like. It’s the work of the Spirit. It’s a miracle.

4. Embrace Uncertainty

This verse felt in my ministry like the thrill and the test of not knowing what the future would bring. Acts 20:22: “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there.” If you have to know enough about tomorrow to feel safe in this world, you’re going to waste your life.

5. Expect Suffering

Acts 20:24 felt like it was a call to suffer. Acts 20:23: “. . . except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.” God has said that to all of us, not just Paul. He says to all of us, “Through many afflictions you must enter the kingdom” (see Acts 14:22). And, “If you would live a godly life in Christ Jesus, you will be persecuted” (see 2 Timothy 3:12). And, “He who would follow me,” Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, “must deny himself and take up his cross,” the instrument of death. The single-minded devotion to the call of Jesus is an expectation of suffering.

6. Run to the End

Finally, I’ll mention that now, at age 79, this verse burns in my heart with the desire not to waste my final years — not to waste them with the worldly notion that the last years of our lives on earth are for leisure and not ministry. “Come on, Paul. You’re getting old. How about a little cottage on the Aegean Sea? You’ve already done more in your ministry, Paul, than most people do in five lifetimes. It’s time to rest, Paul. Let the last twenty years of your life be for travel and golf and shuffleboard and pickleball and putzing around in the garage and digging in the garden, Paul. Let Timothy have a chance, for goodness’ sake. He’s young. You don’t have to go to Jerusalem. They’re going to bind your hands and feet and hand you over to the Gentiles. You’re an old man. Get out of your head that crazy notion of going to Spain at your age. You’re going to get yourself killed. It isn’t American. It’s not what you’re supposed to do.”

So, I love this verse. I love it. “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to witchcraft and wizardry week on APJ. We asked, “Is there good magic and edifying sorcery?” — a debate we hear all the time over Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and other fantasy literature. Pastor John dove into that big debate on Monday, with a twist of his own (as you’d imagine), in APJ 2121.

And another question about witchcraft and wizardry comes in today from Archie, a listener who is putting together three texts coming up in our Bible readings this month. “Pastor John, hello,” he writes. “In our Bible readings coming up in the Old Testament, we read that sorcerers and those who practice witchcraft are to be killed. That’s very clear to me according to Exodus 22:18 and Leviticus 20:27. But when Jewish Bible scholar the apostle Paul enters Ephesus, a city full of magic, he calls for no one to be executed — simply for all the books to be piled up in the city center and to be burned. That I see in Acts 19:19. Certainly Paul would have known full well the contrast from what he saw in Scripture from what he was calling for. Why is the Old Testament more violent here? And why is the same sin handled so differently in the New Testament?”

Well, this is huge. I mean, it has to do with the relationships between God’s way of working in Israel in the Old Testament and his way of working today.

God’s Dealings with His People

Let me back up and start with Abraham. With the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12, God brought into being a people for his own name. That people was defined both by physical lineage (as Jewish) and by covenant, in which God pledged himself to work for their good on their behalf as they trusted him and obeyed his laws. Now, from the beginning, this people was both a political and a religious reality. They were a nation-state, and they were in a privileged position toward God. The laws of the religion, Jewishness, were the laws of the state. They functioned among other political nation-states, this nation did (Israel). They had a standing army. They claimed a geographic territory as the rightful place of their earthly national existence.

So, for two thousand years, from Abraham to Christ, there was this primary focus of God’s saving work on that people. That’s the way he worked his redemptive plan in the world. He focused on Israel. Paul said in Romans 9:4–5,

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

One of the reasons that God established his presence among the nations through the people of Israel in this way — this particular national way — was to demonstrate the hopeless condition of humanity and to prepare them for the coming of a Savior. The history of Israel is not a history of successful relations with God. It is mainly a history of failure. The law was given to Israel to show that salvation by law-keeping was impossible because of how deeply sinful humans are.

Paul sums it up in Romans 3:19–20: “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law [as Jewish people], so that every mouth [that’s the nations] may be stopped, and the whole world [not just Israel] may be held accountable to God.” That’s why he created Israel the way he did and gave her the law the way he did. And then he continues, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

So, one of the purposes of God in dealing with Israel the way he did for two thousand years was to show that not only could Israel not be saved through law-keeping, but how much less could anybody else in the world be saved, who didn’t have the privileges of Israel. All of this was preparatory for the coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ. Since during those two thousand years, Israel, God’s people, were a geographic, political, national state with religious laws functioning as her national laws, therefore the punishments for disobedience to those laws were carried out by Israel in her capacity as a national political state. God’s aim for those centuries was to make vivid on earth the nature of his holiness and the seriousness of sin.

An Example of Such Dealings

Thus, for example, the carrying out of capital punishment was part of the lesson book for the nations. The law of God was being fleshed out in Israel. This is how serious sin is. And so, sorcery was a capital crime (Exodus 22:18). Cursing your mother and father was a capital crime (Leviticus 20:9). Bestiality, having sex with an animal, was a capital crime (Exodus 22:19). Adultery was a capital crime for both the man and the woman (Leviticus 20:10). Homosexual intercourse was a capital crime (Leviticus 20:13), and so on.

This was to show on earth, among the nations (and for us in our Bibles), the ultimate standards of God’s holiness — and therefore we should not read this history, the history of God’s dealings with Israel, and say, “Well, that shouldn’t have happened. That shouldn’t have happened in those days.” We should not say that. We shouldn’t call God’s way in that time into question. God chose that it happened that way, and he did it in order for us to tremble at the prospect of committing sin and to send us flying to Christ.

“It’s only a matter of time until all sin that is not repented of and forsaken will be brought into judgment.”

In those punishments, God was showing his intense opposition to attitudes and behaviors that exalt human self-determination and belittle God’s laws. Such punishments were indeed severe, but they were no more severe than the punishments that await such flagrant sinning in our own time, for God will come to judge the quick and the dead. It’s only a matter of time until all sin that is not repented of and forsaken will be brought into judgment, a judgment every bit as severe as capital punishment in the Old Testament — indeed, far more severe.

How Jesus Changed the World

But with the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ, profound changes came into the world and transformed the nature of the people of God and the way this people witnessed to God in the world. “The kingdom of God [is] taken away from [Israel] and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:43). The new people of God, the church of Jesus, are no longer those who are ethnic by origin or by circumcision, but only by faith in the Messiah Jesus. That’s who’s made a part of the pilgrim people of God, the Christian church.

We are not a nation or a political entity. We have no geographic location, and therefore there is no direct correlation between the laws of the state and the law of Christ in his church. We are transferred out of darkness into the kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13). “[Christ’s] kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Otherwise, we would use the sword to enforce his rule, but we don’t.

We are sojourners and exiles scattered among the nations, and we are defined not by national or political or geographic borders or political structures. The old covenant, Hebrews says, has passed away. The priesthood is replaced with Christ. The sacrifices are replaced with Christ. We’ve died to the law. All foods are declared clean, so you don’t have those ceremonial laws in the church anymore. The temple is no longer the center of our religious life, and our life in this world has been put on a new footing.

Life in Christ as God’s People

This new life in the church in Christ is characterized by the fact that Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). The church is on a mission to rescue sinners from condemnation by offering them forgiveness through Christ. That includes forgiveness for sins that once would have been immediately executed as capital crimes. Paul lists some of those sins in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 that would have been executed, and then he says, “Such were some of you. But . . . ” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Here you stand with your head still on. In other words, instead of being executed, repentant sinners are justified, cleansed, sanctified, forgiven, folded into the new people of God.

The sins are just as serious now. They were serious in the Old Testament. They’re just as serious today. And the punishment that awaits those whose sins are not repented of and forsaken will be far more severe in hell than anything the Old Testament ever did through capital punishment. The same standards of holiness prevail today as in those days, but we live in a day of mercy, a day of reprieve, a day of salvation and reconciliation with God. And so, the church continues to bear witness to the absolute holiness of God and yet makes the world aware: “Now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). “Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).