Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Cut to the heart: repent and be baptized
Acts 2:37-41
37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” · WEB
The first altar call in the church's history answers a question the hearers asked, and the terms are the same ones offered ever since.
The response comes before the appeal. They were cut to the heart, and they asked what to do. Nothing in the sermon told them to feel this; Peter had not urged them toward a decision or described the consequences of refusing. He argued a case from Scripture and from facts they knew, and the argument did its own work.
The question they ask is the practical one — Brothers, what shall we do? — and it comes from men who have just been told they crucified their Lord. It assumes the situation is desperate and assumes something might still be done about it. Both assumptions turn out to be correct.
Peter's answer has four parts and they are worth separating. Repent: change the mind that produced the crucifixion. Be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ: the public act by which a person changes sides, and it is required individually, which is why the number of the baptized can be counted at the end. For the forgiveness of sins: the outcome, and the reason a crowd guilty of this particular crime is not turned away. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit: the same endowment they have spent the morning watching, promised to them.
The order of the last two is quietly decisive for what follows in this book. Forgiveness and the Spirit are offered together, to people who an hour earlier were opponents, on terms that include no probation and no course of instruction. Later, when the question is whether uncircumcised Gentiles may be received, the argument that settles it will be that God gave them this same gift Acts 11:17 — and it is settled that way because of the precedent set here.
The promise is then stretched further than the crowd could have expected. It is to them, to their children, and to all who are far off, even as many as the Lord our God will call to himself. The phrase for those far off is the language the prophets used for the nations, and it sits in the first Christian sermon, spoken to a Jewish audience in Jerusalem, some ten chapters before the church works out what it means.
Three thousand were baptized that day. The figure is large and the city could absorb it; Jerusalem at a pilgrim feast held many times that number, and there was water enough. What the number chiefly records is that the sermon's hearers were not the mockers of verse thirteen but the perplexed of verse twelve, and that a question honestly asked was honestly answered.
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