Acts 2:36–38 — “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” 37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” 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.
We saw last time that baptism provides us with a picture of cleansing, and points to the need for us to be made clean from the pollution and corruption of sin if we would ever see heaven.
Our passage comes from Peter's remarkable sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, he enables the people to see the enormity of their sin. They had taken the long-awaited Messiah, the Savior God had first promised back in the Garden of Eden (and with increasing clarity throughout the Old Testament), and they had put Him to death by nailing Him to a cross of wood. Their eyes are opened, and they are pierced to the heart. In that moment, perhaps, they understand that sin of this magnitude must bear eternal consequences.
There is clearly no quick fix, no band-aid that can be applied so that life can go on as though they had never done this most wicked of deeds. In that realization, they cry out "what shall we do?" When we are confronted with the guilt of our sin, it is natural for us to look to ourselves for a solution. We must do something to put things right - but what shall we do? Peter's answer must have come as a surprise to them. They did not have to undertake some great feat to atone for their sin. They did not have to offer thousands of animal sacrifices. Instead, they are commanded to repent (turn away from sin and turn to God) and (if they did repent) to be baptized, giving the outward sign that their sins, including the sin of crucifying Jesus, had been forgiven.
The startling truth, then, is that repentance and faith in Christ is the only way to be forgiven for our offences against God. The "smallest" of our sins rightly deserves eternal punishment, and needs Jesus to die on the cross so that we may be forgiven. He had to bear the punishment in our place, for there was no-one else good enough to pay the price for a countless number of those God had chosen. You can be sure that if there had been another way to cleanse sinners, the Father would not have sent Jesus to such a cruel and painful death!
Baptism, then, speaks of a cleansing from sin, even sin of the most heinous kind, that is available to those who will repent and cast themselves on Jesus for salvation. This cleansing is available nowhere else. It is only in the blood of Jesus that our sins can be washed away.
Have your sins been washed away? There is only One Who can do that for you!
