Prophetic Empowerment
18
Power of Pentecost
Luke’s Missiology in Acts 1–2
Unlike some other essays in this volume, this chapter focuses on some of Luke’s message, addresses potential application, and arranges the material in a somewhat homiletical way. Its engagement with Acts in its ancient setting nevertheless makes it an appropriate chapter in this volume. Readers wanting more detail on Acts 1 – 2 may consult the 397 pages on these chapters in my commentary on Acts. ¹⁴⁶⁵
The line between writing a missiological commentary on Acts and developing Luke’s missiology in Acts would be rather thin; Acts is about early Christian mission. (Specifically, I believe, Luke writes to encourage a diaspora Christian audience about its divinely-authored heritage, including by responding apologetically to criticism of Paul’s legacy.) I therefore focus my discussion of Luke’s missiology on the opening two chapters of Acts, which set the tone for the rest of the book by showing how God’s Spirit empowers crosscultural mission.¹⁴⁶⁶
The beginning of Acts recapitulates the end of Luke 24,¹⁴⁶⁷ hence functions as the pivot between Luke’s Gospel and Acts. It is thus a critical section for showing how the message of his Gospel will apply to the church. In this introductory section of Acts, Acts 1:8 is central: “You will be witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth once the Spirit comes on you.” Before returning to this verse in more detail, it is helpful to outline the major points in this essay:
1.The Promise of Pentecost (1:4–8)
2.Preparation for Pentecost (prayer and leadership; 1:12–26)
3.The Proofs of Pentecost (2:1–4)
4.The Peoples of Pentecost (2:5–13)
5.The Prophecy of Pentecost (2:17–21)
6.The Preaching of Pentecost (2:22–40)
7.The Purpose of Pentecost (2:41–47)
Some of these paragraphs (especially the first one) will require much fuller comment for our exploration than will others.
The Promise of Pentecost (1:4–8)
Jesus calls his disciples’ attention to a source of power that is so central that they must remain in Jerusalem, awaiting the Father’s promise, rather than attempting to fulfill the mission in their own strength (1:4). Luke here emphasizes that disciples cannot succeed in Christ’s mission without Christ’s power. Jesus already set the example for this dependence in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 3:22; 4:1, 14, 18–19), as Acts will reiterate (Acts 10:38).¹⁴⁶⁸ Because introductions in ancient literature often traced the primary themes that a book would address,¹⁴⁶⁹ this introductory paragraph is one of the paragraphs in Acts’ opening section that invites particularly detailed exploration.
Incipient Eschatology
Jesus talks with his disciples about the “kingdom” (1:3) and the Spirit (1:4–5). Biblical prophets had already associated the outpouring of the Spirit with the end-time restoration of Israel (e.g., Isa 44:3; 59:21; Ezek 36:26–27; 37:14; 39:29; Joel 2:28–29).¹⁴⁷⁰ The disciples, then, ask the obvious question: is Jesus about to restore the kingdom? (1:6).
Jesus answers that the consummation of the kingdom will eventually come (1:7), but the Spirit is given now so that the disciples can prepare for the kingdom’s coming by evangelizing the nations (1:8). Because the disciples expected the Spirit eschatologically, they would understand Jesus’s promise of the Spirit as involving the coming of the future. Once the disciples understood that the Spirit would precede the consummation of the kingdom, they should understand that the Spirit was giving them power to live out some of the life of the future kingdom in the present, an idea shared widely in first-century Christian texts (Rom 8:11, 23; 14:17; 1 Cor 2:9–10; 2 Cor 5:5; Gal 5:5; 6:8; Eph 1:13–14; 2 Thess 2:13; Heb 6:4–5; cf. Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22; Matt 12:28//Luke 11:20).¹⁴⁷¹
Prophetic Empowerment
In Acts 1:8, Jesus promises that they will receive “power” when the Spirit comes. What does Luke mean by power? Although not all references involve healing and exorcism, these constitute the most common expressions of that power in Luke’s narrative. Thus Jesus casts out demons with power in Luke 4:36; power was present for healing in Luke 5:17; power was coming from Jesus to heal in Luke 6:19; power came from Jesus to heal in Luke 8:46; and Jesus gave the Twelve power over demons in Luke 9:1.
Likewise, in Acts 3:12, Peter insists that it is not by their own “power” or holiness that the man was healed, but by Jesus’s name. The authorities demand in Acts 4:7, “By what power, or in what name,” the man was healed, inviting the same emphasis. In Acts 6:8, Stephen, “full of grace and power,” was doing wonders and signs.¹⁴⁷² In Acts 10:38, Peter declares that Jesus healed all who were oppressed by the devil because he was anointed with the Spirit and power.
We should note how closely Luke’s account connects this empowerment with the Spirit. The Hebrew Scriptures often associated the Spirit with prophetic empowerment, among other activities. By the era of the early church, early Jewish sources generally focus on this activity even more specifically, as a number of scholars, most extensively Robert Menzies, have shown.¹⁴⁷³ Because the Spirit was so closely associated with prophecy and the kinds of activities undertaken by prophets, Jesus was promising the disciples that the same Spirit who spoke through the prophets would speak through them. If we are too accustomed to that notion to catch its full force, we might imagine Jesus speaking to us and saying, “You will be like Isaiah,” or, “You will be like Jeremiah,” or, “You will be like Deborah.”
Because Luke has already noted that Jesus’s commission is grounded in Scripture (Luke 24:44–46), he invites us to hear echoes of Scripture in Jesus’s words here. The promise that the Spirit would empower them¹⁴⁷⁴ as “witnesses to . . . the ends of the earth” reflects the language of Isaiah.¹⁴⁷⁵ Isaiah spoke of Israel or its remnant being “witnesses” for YHWH (Isa 43:10; 44:8), a role here applied to witnesses for Jesus. Isaiah spoke of God empowering his people through his Spirit in that time (e.g., Isa 32:15; 44:3), including to speak for him (Isa 42:1; 48:16; 59:21; 61:1). The “ends of the earth” also echoes Isaiah, especially Isa 49:6, later quoted in Acts 13:47.¹⁴⁷⁶ In that passage it applies to Paul’s mission,¹⁴⁷⁷ indicating that this mission in Acts applies not only to the Twelve, but to Jesus’s movement of whom they were the most visible representatives and leaders. That is clear also because Luke is explicit that the empowerment of the Spirit necessary for the task is not only for the Twelve but also for all believers (2:38–39), whatever our various roles.
Ancient writers sometimes stated a thesis or offered a preview toward the beginning of their work,¹⁴⁷⁸ and scholars often observe that Acts 1:8 provides one very rough outline for Acts, which moves from Jerusalem (Acts 1—7) to Judea and Samaria (8; 9:31–43) and toward the ends of the earth (10—28).¹⁴⁷⁹ Whereas Luke’s Gospel begins and ends with the temple in Jerusalem, Acts moves from Jerusalem to Rome. The overall narrative movement in Acts, then, is from heritage to mission.¹⁴⁸⁰
Where does Luke envision the “ends of the earth”? His contemporaries in the Mediterranean world spoke of the far west as Spain or (beyond it) the “river” Ocean.¹⁴⁸¹ To the east, they thought of such regions as Parthia, and beyond it, India¹⁴⁸² and China.¹⁴⁸³ They knew of peoples to the north such as Scythians, Germans, Britons, and a place called Thule, possibly Iceland.¹⁴⁸⁴ They thought of the southern ends of the earth as what they called “Ethiopia,” meaning Africa south of Egypt.¹⁴⁸⁵ In addition to important trade ties with China over the Silk Road (and Roman merchants traveling as far as Vietnam),¹⁴⁸⁶ they had trade ties as far south in Africa as Tanzania.¹⁴⁸⁷ The most common sense of “Ethiopia” involved the Nubian kingdom of Meroë, so that Philip is proleptically reaching the southern “ends of the earth” already when he shares good news with an official from that kingdom later in Acts (8:26–40).¹⁴⁸⁸
The “ends of the earth” thus does not simply involve Rome, where Luke’s narrative ends.¹⁴⁸⁹ Yet Rome is strategic for his narrative, because Luke writes to people in the Roman Empire for whom the evangelization of Rome would impact the entire empire, the sphere where most of his original audience lived. Paul reaching Rome in Acts 28 is thus a proleptic fulfillment of the mission, like Philip preaching to the African official or Peter preaching to the diaspora crowds present at the feast of Pentecost. Acts does not conclude with the completion of the mission but offers a model for its continuance and completion: the good news to the ends of the earth, including parts of the world that Luke’s audience could not have known about.¹⁴⁹⁰
Starting from Jerusalem makes sense; it was foundational in salvation history (cf. Isa 2:3; Mic 4:1–3; Rom 15:19) and many Jews viewed it as the center of the earth.¹⁴⁹¹ If any starting point was privileged, it was Jerusalem; Paul in Acts also repeatedly starts first with synagogues before going to gentiles. In practical terms, however, God’s people have just started where they were.¹⁴⁹²
Another biblical allusion appears in Acts 1:9–11, in addition to the allusion in Acts 1:8. This allusion, like the allusion to Isaiah noted above, also implies Spirit-empowered witness, because it evokes the model of prophetic empowerment. In this passage, Jesus ascends to heaven after promising the Spirit. The most obvious allusion to an ascension that Luke could expect all of his biblically informed audience to catch is an allusion to Elijah.¹⁴⁹³ When he ascended to heaven, he left for Elisha, his successor, a double portion of the Spirit who had rested on him (2 Kgs 2:9–14).¹⁴⁹⁴ As that Old Testament account provided for the transition between narratives about Elijah’s ministry and those about Elisha’s, so the present account functions as a transition between Jesus’s ministry in Luke’s Gospel and that of his appointed agents in Acts.¹⁴⁹⁵ Again we see an allusion to the same Spirit who empowered the prophets.
Preparation for Pentecost (Acts 1:12–26)
Although I address here preparation for Pentecost much more briefly than in my treatment of 1:4–8, 1:12–26 is also crucial to Luke’s point. Part of the narrative involves reestablishing the leadership structure of the Twelve, assigned by Jesus, presumably (as in some other ancient models) as an expression of expectation in Israel’s restoration.¹⁴⁹⁶ For them to restore the leadership structure was to prepare for Jesus’s promise in faith. In biblical narratives, some matters must await God’s time, but he allows those who trust him to prepare for them in advance (e.g., 1 Chron 22:14–16; 28:11–19).
A key element that frames the section about preparing for the Spirit’s coming is the emphasis on prayer together and unity (1:14; 2:1). Prayer is a frequent theme in Luke-Acts,¹⁴⁹⁷ and often precedes the coming of the Spirit there.¹⁴⁹⁸ Thus of the four Gospels only Luke mentions that the Spirit descends on Jesus when he is “praying” (Luke 3:21–22). When the assembly of believers pray together in Acts 4:31, they are filled with the Spirit. In 8:15, Peter and John pray for the Samaritans to receive the Spirit. Saul is filled with the Spirit (9:17) after devoted prayer (9:11). The Spirit likewise falls on Cornelius and his guests (10:44) after Cornelius had been praying (10:30), although the connection is not as direct as in Acts’ opening chapters.
Although Luke does not always associate the Spirit with prayer, the connection is frequent enough, and sometimes clear enough (especially in 4:31), to reinforce the importance of prayer in preparing for the Spirit’s coming. Luke’s first volume is most explicit on this point: the discussion of prayer in Luke 11:1–13 climaxes in prayer’s chief object, the gift of God’s own person and presence, namely, the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13). In that passage Jesus promises that God will not withhold this blessing from any who ask and seek insistently for it.¹⁴⁹⁹
The Proofs of Pentecost (2:2–4)
Three signs publicly demonstrate the Spirit’s coming on the day of Pentecost: wind (2:2), fire (2:3), and worship in languages unknown to the speakers (2:4).¹⁵⁰⁰ Of the three, the third will call for the greatest comment.
The wind and fire here both evoke earlier biblical theophanies (e.g., Exod 3:2; 2 Sam 5:24; 1 Kgs 19:11–12; Job 38:1; Ps 29:3–10; 97:2–5; 104:3; Isa 6:4; 29:6; 30:27–28; 66:15; Ezek 1:4),¹⁵⁰¹ and scholars often compare them with phenomena accompanying God’s revelation at Sinai (Exod 19:16–20; Deut 4:11, 24).¹⁵⁰² Moreover, these theophanic elements recall a theme that we observed earlier: the Spirit comes as a foretaste, an initial experience of, the future world.¹⁵⁰³ Wind evokes the image of end-time, resurrection life that may be inferred in Ezek 37:9, 14;¹⁵⁰⁴ fire often evoked eschatological judgment,¹⁵⁰⁵ including when paired with the Spirit in Luke 3:16 (see Luke 3:9, 17).¹⁵⁰⁶ The eschatological era was breaking into the present, a point reinforced explicitly by Peter’s opening explanation that the outpoured prophetic Spirit demonstrated the arrival of the “last days” (2:17), the eschatological time of salvation (2:20–21).
Tongues, however, is the most significant of the three signs for Luke, being repeated at initial outpourings in Acts 10:46 and 19:6. This speaking in tongues is also more strategic for Luke’s narrative because what follows hinges on it: tongues provides the catalyst for the multicultural audience’s recognition of God’s activity (2:5–13), and the starting point for Peter’s message: “This is what Joel meant . . . ” (2:16–17).
Further, tongues speech does not appear here arbitrarily, as one possible sign among many. Instead, it relates to Acts’ theme articulated in Acts 1:8: Spirit-inspired, cross-cultural witness. Luke recounts that they were “speaking in other languages even as the Spirit was giving them inspired utterance” (2:4). Peter goes on to explain the phenomenon biblically as a form of inspired, prophetic speech, noting that it fulfills Joel’s prediction that God’s people would prophesy (2:17–18). But Luke’s emphasis in 1:8 is prophetic witness for Christ, bringing the “word of the Lord” (e.g., 8:25; 12:24; 13:48–49).
Why then does he choose to underline tongues-speaking as such a significant example of this prophetic empowerment, mentioning it at three distinct outpourings of the Spirit? Undoubtedly Luke emphasizes the connection between tongues and prophetic empowerment by the Spirit because it concretely exemplifies his theme of Spirit-empowered cross-cultural witness. If God’s people can worship God in other people’s languages, how much more can they share the good news through languages that they share in common? That is, worshiping God in other people’s languages shows that God has empowered the church to cross all cultural and linguistic barriers with his gospel.¹⁵⁰⁷
Here is where early Pentecostals observed a connection that most (though not all) traditional scholars historically missed.¹⁵⁰⁸ Late nineteenth-century radical evangelicals stressed holiness, missions, and healing. Many sought what they called the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” and were praying for God to provide “missionary tongues,” which they believed were supernaturally endowed languages that would enable them to bypass the lengthy process of missionary language-acquisition.¹⁵⁰⁹
This was the expectant milieu in which the earliest Pentecostals sought the Spirit for empowerment for mission (1:8) and experienced what they initially believed were “missionary tongues.”¹⁵¹⁰ Many left for foreign countries to try out their “missionary tongues,” and most were cruelly disappointed. Although Pentecostals kept tongues for prayer (as in 1 Cor 14:13–14), most abandoned the “missionary tongues” idea.¹⁵¹¹
Nevertheless, there is a sense in which they were right about the connection between missions and tongues-speaking that they saw in Acts. Granted, neither in Acts nor in early Pentecostalism did tongues provide a substitute for language-learning (nor, I might add regretfully, does it usually perform that service for students preparing for their doctoral language exams). While people have reportedly sometimes recognized the languages spoken,¹⁵¹² that does not seem to be the primary purpose of the gift either in the New Testament (although some would except here Acts 2) or in modern Christian experience.
Yet tongues is important precisely because it aptly illustrates Luke’s emphasis on the power of the Spirit to speak for God across cultural barriers. For Luke, tongues is not an arbitrary sign; it is a sign that God has empowered his servants to exalt him in others’ languages. Even among charismatic scholars, there is not absolute agreement whether every individual who receives this empowerment prays in tongues.¹⁵¹³ Nevertheless, those who observe Luke’s narrative closely should recognize, whatever their own experience or theology, that tongues evidences the character of the experience: God has empowered his witnesses to cross cultural barriers with his gospel.
It is probably no coincidence that Pentecostalism in one century experienced perhaps the most massive growth rates of any Christian movement in history, given that it was birthed in a context that emphasized holiness (uncompromised devotion to God), prayer, faith and missions. Of course, that connection also serves as a warning, because many movements that began with such emphases and growth rates eventually cooled and were supplanted by other movements of God’s Spirit. Movements do not retain the Spirit merely by retaining a heritage or tradition that enshrines a past experience of the Spirit, or simply repeating what their predecessors have done. As we have seen, the earliest Pentecostals were flexible, often correcting their ideas where needed.¹⁵¹⁴ To maintain the blessing that inaugurates such movements, those in such movements need not so much all their forebears’ ideas as the personal and corporate experience of God’s Spirit.
The Peoples of Pentecost (Acts 2:5–13)
Luke’s narrative goes on to reinforce the point implicit in the tongues-speaking by recounting a proleptic foreshadowing of the gospel reaching the ends of the earth. Luke indicates the presence of diaspora Jews “from every nation under heaven” (2:5). Although they are Jewish, the breadth of their geographic exposure foreshadows the mission to the nations laid out in 1:8,¹⁵¹⁵ just as the African official foreshadows the “ends of the earth” in 8:26–40 and evangelizing in the heart of the empire does so in 28:16–31.
Although there is no absolute consensus, most scholars think that Luke here alludes to the account of the Tower of Babel.¹⁵¹⁶ (This was the view of many ancient commentators¹⁵¹⁷ and early Pentecostals¹⁵¹⁸ as well as that of many modern scholars.) Luke provides a list of nations from which these Jewish worshipers came (2:9–11), and such a list would evoke most easily the Bible’s first list of nations in Gen 10.¹⁵¹⁹ That list was followed in Gen 11:1–9 by God coming down to scatter the languages.¹⁵²⁰ Whereas God scatters languages there in judgment, he scatters languages here to bring a new cross-cultural unity in the Spirit.¹⁵²¹
Cross-cultural unity was also experienced as a major activity of the Spirit in early Pentecostalism. The Azusa Street Revival occurred in a historical context of revivals elsewhere in the world, including the Welsh Revival and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pandita Ramabai’s orphanage in India. The major human figure providing leadership in the Azusa Street Revival was William Seymour, an African-American man of prayer, in a time of severe racial segregation in the United States; the revival was multicultural.¹⁵²² Frank Bartleman, a white American participant in the revival, celebrated that “The color line was washed away by the blood.”¹⁵²³
Unfortunately, this washing proved temporary, as external factors such as the social realities of Jim Crow laws in the southern US led to a new segregation.¹⁵²⁴ Seymour’s white mentor Charles Parham criticized the events at Azusa Street in racial terms, and Seymour, feeling betrayed, shifted the focus that his preaching emphasized in Acts 2. Seymour noted that in Acts 2, the outpouring of the Spirit involved crossing cultural barriers. The true reception of the Spirit must involve ethnic reconciliation and unity among Christ’s followers.¹⁵²⁵ Through his bitter experience with Parham, Seymour came to reemphasize the unity to which tongues-speaking points.
The rest of Acts develops this theme. For example, despite the conflict between Hebrews and Hellenists in 6:1, the new Hellenist leaders are themselves full of the Spirit (6:3, 5, 10; 7:51, 55).¹⁵²⁶ These bicultural ministers carry the mission forward across a cultural barrier not yet breached by the Twelve, setting the example for them (e.g., 8:25, 40; 9:35; 10:24).¹⁵²⁷ The Spirit continues to drive God’s own resistant people across cultural barriers (8:29; 10:19; 15:28); God baptizes new groups in the Spirit so that they become the Jerusalem believers’ partners in mission, not just recipients of their ministry (8:15–17; 10:44–46; 19:6).
The Prophecy of Pentecost (Acts 2:17–21)
As we have been noting, the disciples’ worship in other tongues (2:4) fulfilled Joel’s prophecy about prophetic empowerment (2:16–18). As readers of this passage have long noted: when the crowd heard the worship in tongues (2:6), they asked, “What does ‘this’ [praise in many languages] mean?” (2:12; cf. 2:11) Peter then responded, “‘This’ fulfills what Joel said” (2:16) about God’s people prophesying (2:17–18).¹⁵²⁸
In light of Joel, all God’s people are now to be empowered as end-time prophets for Christ. Peter quotes Joel 2:28–32 (MT and LXX 3:1–5), but he also adapts the wording at points to bring out the meaning (a common Jewish practice).¹⁵²⁹ Joel said that God would pour out the Spirit “afterward”—in the context, after a period of terrible judgment (Joel 2:25–27), at the time of Israel’s restoration (3:1). Emphasizing that the eschatological promise is now being fulfilled, Peter adapts the wording in line with the original context: God pours out the Spirit “in the last days” (Acts 2:17). “Last days” is eschatological language,¹⁵³⁰ yet it was being fulfilled already in the present (cf. similarly Rom 8:22; 1 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 3:1; Heb 1:2; 2 Pet 3:3; Rev 12:5–6, 10). Peter’s adaptation underlines the observation that Jesus’s first coming had already introduced the end-time, though it would be consummated only with his return.
Peter adds another line that highlights the prophetic nature of the gift: “And they will prophesy” (2:18). This line simply reiterates what Peter has already quoted directly from Joel: “your sons and daughters will prophesy”; they will also dream dreams and see visions (2:17), experiences most typical in biblical history for prophets. Acts is full of examples of such activity, which are meant to characterize the Spirit-empowered, eschatological people of God, i.e., the church.
The universality of the gift is one of its most striking features in this passage. The promise involves “sons and daughters,” that is, both genders (Acts 2:17).¹⁵³¹ Not surprisingly, Luke tends to pair female prophetesses with male prophets (Luke 2:26–38; Acts 21:9–11; cf. Luke 1:41–45, 67–79); because Philip has four prophesying daughters, Luke actually mentions more prophetesses than prophets.¹⁵³² The mention of young and old (Acts 2:17) shows that the gift is for all ages; although ancient Mediterranean society respected elders,¹⁵³³ Luke reports the prophetic young daughters of Philip (21:9)¹⁵³⁴ as well as the aged widow Anna (Luke 2:36–37). Luke obliterates the class distinction in Joel’s promise that the Spirit will also fall on slaves (Joel 2:29), but only because Luke emphasizes that the prophets are God’s slaves (Acts 2:18),¹⁵³⁵ a common biblical designation for prophets.¹⁵³⁶ That they are “male” and “female” servants reinforces the transcending of gender barriers.¹⁵³⁷
But perhaps of most immediate importance for Luke’s larger narrative in Acts is Joel’s “all flesh” (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17).¹⁵³⁸ The point of the phrase that may elude Peter within the narrative world at this point (cf. 10:28) will be obvious to Luke’s ideal audience (cf. Luke 2:32; 4:25–27); for them it may recall a programmatic text from Isaiah (Isa 40:5 LXX), cited in Luke 3:6, about “all flesh” (pasa sarx) seeing God’s salvation. When Peter concludes the sermon with an echo of Isa 57:19, indicating that the promise of the Spirit is for all who are “far off,” whoever God will call (Acts 2:39),¹⁵³⁹ he reinforces (again perhaps unknown to himself at that point in the narrative) God’s plan to transcend all cultural barriers to reach all peoples (cf. 22:21). God wants to pour out his Spirit on everyone who will call on his name.
The Preaching of Pentecost (Acts 2:22–40)
Although 2:22–40 is one of the longest components of Luke’s introductory section, I comment here only briefly. In keeping with the preaching throughout Acts, this passage underlines the sort of Christocentric and resurrection-focused message that the Spirit particularly empowers in Acts. Having quoted the passage from Joel relevant to the current outpouring of the Spirit, Peter now begins to explain the part of that passage that invites an active response from his audience: “whoever calls on the Lord’s name will be saved” (Acts 2:21).
Joel announced that “whoever calls on the name of YHWH will be delivered,” among “those whom the Lord calls” (Joel 2:32). In Acts, Peter breaks off the quote at “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21) and then picks up some of the rest of it at Acts 2:39: “as many as the Lord our God shall call.” In accord with common midrashic procedure, between these two lines he is expounding the line he has quoted. Given that the eschatological time, the time of salvation, has broken in upon them, they must now call on the Lord’s name to be saved.¹⁵⁴⁰
But what is the Lord’s name on which the text invites them to call? The Hebrew text of Joel refers to YHWH, but Jewish people generally avoided pronouncing the divine name, and the Greek text uses the normal surrogate for YHWH, namely, “lord” (kurios). By linking together texts with common key words, a common Jewish interpretive technique,¹⁵⁴¹ Peter shows that Jesus is the “Lord” at the right hand of the Father, hence the “Lord” on whom they are to call. (He thereby implies Jesus’s deity, consistent with the postresurrection revelation in 1:8.)
The apostolic witnesses (and the Spirit) testify that Jesus has risen, and Peter argues that Scripture makes the theological implications of this reality for their situation clear. In Ps 16:8–11 the risen one (according to Peter’s application) is at God’s side (Acts 2:25–28); in Ps 110:1, the one at God’s right hand is the “Lord” (Acts 2:34–35). They must therefore call on the name of the divine Lord, Jesus.¹⁵⁴²
For Peter, this “calling on” the Lord Jesus is not simply reciting a prayer; it is a public profession, and one that was no less offensive in that culture than John the Baptist immersing fellow Israelites as if they were gentiles. The concrete expression of “calling on” the Lord that Peter demands is repentance and baptism “in the name of Jesus Christ” (2:38). Baptism in Jesus’s name in Acts does not involve a formula that one says over a person being baptized; the expression “in Jesus’s name” accompanies the verb for “baptize” only when it is in the passive voice, i.e., when people are receiving baptism. It thus involves not the baptizer’s formula, but the prayer of one receiving baptism (cf. 22:16: “be baptized . . . calling on his name”).
Logistically, these immersions would not be complicated; the temple mount was full of baptismal pools for ceremonial washings.¹⁵⁴³ To publicly accept immersion as would one turning from former gentile ways, however, constituted a radical declaration of new obedience.¹⁵⁴⁴
The Purpose of Pentecost (Acts 2:41–47)
Luke contends that God poured out the Spirit to empower his people to evangelize cross-culturally; but what was the anticipated outcome of this cross-cultural evangelism? God intended to create a new community in which believers would love one another and demonstrate to this age the very image of the life of his kingdom.
We can see this purpose of evangelism in the structure of this closing paragraph of this opening section of Acts:¹⁵⁴⁵
◊Effective evangelism (2:41)
•Shared worship, meals, and prayer (2:42)
■Shared possessions (2:44–45)
•Shared worship, meals, and prayer (2:46)
◊Effective evangelism (2:47)
At the heart of the outcome of the new life of the Spirit is not only the Spirit’s power and gifting for ministry, but what we might call (in Paul’s language) the Spirit’s “fruit.” Spirit-empowered believers loved one another so much that they valued one another more than they valued their possessions (2:44–45).¹⁵⁴⁶ Just as tongues is repeated at various initial outpourings of the Spirit, this sharing of possessions recurs as a dominant element in the revival in 4:31–35, underlining the importance of this theme (cf. also Luke 12:33; 13:33).¹⁵⁴⁷ Whereas Peter’s preaching leads to many converts on one occasion in Acts 2:41, it is the believing community’s lifestyle that leads to continuous conversions in 2:47.
Such sharing also fits a pattern in Luke’s theology of Christian transformation. When the crowds ask Peter what they must do to be saved, he summons them to repent and be baptized in Jesus’s name (2:38). But this passage goes on to show us something of what a repentant lifestyle looks like. This fits a pattern of answers to the “What must I do?” question in Luke-Acts. When John the Baptist demands the fruits of repentance (Luke 3:8) and the crowds ask what to do, John admonishes whoever has more than their basic subsistence needs to share the rest with those who have less (Luke 3:11). When a rich ruler asks Jesus what he must do to have eternal life (Luke 18:18), Jesus urges him to donate all his resources to the poor and follow him (Luke 18:22).
Even later, when the Philippian jailer asks Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), they respond that he must believe in the Lord Jesus (16:31). Lest that seem like a lesser demand than those mentioned above, consider that the jailer then brought them to his own house and fed them (16:34), behavior that could have gotten him in serious trouble with the authorities.¹⁵⁴⁸ After all, he was ordered to securely guard these people (16:23) who were accused of preaching customs illegal for Philippian citizens to observe (16:21).
In Luke-Acts, true conversion involves repentance and commitment to a new Lord. Such commitment to the new Lord also involves commitment to one’s new siblings in the new community (11:30; 12:25). As Acts progresses, it becomes clear that this new community will not belong to only one culture, its table fellowship circumscribed by sacred food customs (10:28; 16:34; 27:35–36).¹⁵⁴⁹ Sometimes Christians in Acts do prove reluctant to cross such boundaries (10:28; 11:3; cf. Gal 2:11–14), just as the Pharisees had about Jesus’s table fellowship with repenting sinners in Luke’s first volume (e.g., Luke 5:30; 7:34; 15:2);¹⁵⁵⁰ but God gives them no rest until he brings them past these barriers. God is creating a new community that transcends human boundaries. God empowers his people with the Spirit to cross cultural barriers, to worship God, and to form one new, multicultural community of worshipers committed to Christ and to one another.
Conclusion
Acts 1–2 is a pivotal section for Luke-Acts, revealing the importance and purpose of the Spirit’s empowerment for global mission. The promise of Pentecost (1:4–8) emphasizes the need for the Spirit, the eschatological character of the Spirit, and the prophetic empowerment dimension of the Spirit. Preparation for Pentecost (1:12—2:1) involves prayer together and readying the leadership structure in faith for God’s promise of the Spirit’s empowerment. The proofs of Pentecost (2:2–4) are eschatological signs, with tongues-speaking signifying the Spirit’s empowerment for cross-cultural witness.
The “peoples” of Pentecost (2:5–13), though diaspora Jews, foreshadow the gentile mission and probably evoke a partial inversion of Babel. The mission, this passage reiterates, is for all peoples. The prophecy of Pentecost (2:17–21) underlines the eschatological, prophetic, and universal character of their empowerment. The preaching of Pentecost (2:22–40) models the Christocentric message that the Spirit particularly empowers. Finally, the purpose of Pentecost (2:41–47) involves the new community that the Spirit-inspired message is meant to form. The Spirit’s empowerment of the church is central for Luke, and is inseparable from the church’s mission in the present age.