Saved By Faith Alone in Acts 2

What is required to become a Christian and be saved from one’s sins?  The Protestant world seems to have convinced itself that salvation comes to a person by faith alone without any further actions on an individual's part.  It is especially adamant in its stand that baptism has no part in salvation.   It is hard to understand but it is without any doubt the majority position of the Protestant world.

They use passage after passage that teach we are saved by faith which no one doubts but they add the word “alone.”  And yet the only time the phrase “faith alone” is used in the Bible the text says, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24 ESV, see also the CSB, NAS, NET, NIV, and the NLT)  The King James Version and the New King James Version reads “not by faith only.”

One has to remember faith has to be defined.  When the Bible speaks of us being saved by faith is it speaking of a dead faith or a living faith?  If it is a living faith it does not stop at mental assent but is moving and active.  To stop is to be dead in its tracks.

Let me ask a question.  In Acts 2 we read of the first gospel sermon ever preached.  Were those people in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost who responded to Peter’s gospel preaching saved by faith?  Certainly!  They were but they were saved with a living faith that responded to Peter’s preaching by believing and obeying it, by repenting and being baptized; Peter said for the remission of their sins (Acts 2:38).  Peter’s command was, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” (Acts 2:38 KJV)

Now make no mistake about it, the faith-only or faith-alone crowd would have those saved that day saved before obedience to Peter’s preaching, saved at the point of faith; based on what they teach their doctrine demands it.  They would deny that but only in part.  They would say you must repent but to do that you have to split Peter’s preaching in half taking part of it, repentance, while rejecting the other, baptism.  One wonders what good conjunctions are in grammar if you can do that to a sentence or in this case to Peter’s oral command.  Or, should we say the Holy Spirit’s oral command?  Yes, we should.

But, if they include repentance in their faith alone doctrine then they ought to quit referring to it as “faith alone” for that it would not be.    

It is plain enough that this crowd on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 had not repented but had developed faith.  We know they had come to faith for the text says “they were cut to the heart” by Peter’s preaching and ask Peter and the apostles “what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37)  We know Peter’s response.  Why command people to repent who have already repented?  Peter commanded them to repent thus they had not done so even though they had faith.

Repentance is not just sorrow for sin.  These people were clearly sorry about crucifying Jesus when they asked what shall we do.  The text says they were cut to the heart.  Godly sorrow leads to repentance (2 Cor. 7:10) but it is not repentance.  To repent one must turn from sin to righteousness.  It is a state of mind and will.  It is a determination to cease sinning and live righteously.  One may be sorry about a thing for a number of reasons without any determination to change his/her ways; this is the sorrow of the world that leads to death (2 Cor. 7:10).

Peter’s preaching that day had produced faith.  The question to be answered was whether it would produce repentance and baptism.  Some of the faith-only people like to say repentance is inherent in faith, that faith is a synecdoche.  Yes, I believe that is true at times but when used that way it includes not just repentance but baptism also.  That they will not accept.  However, in Acts 2 faith is clearly not a synecdoche.  The question they must answer in Acts 2 is exactly when those people were saved.  The only options are (1) at the point of faith, (2) at the point of faith and repentance, (3) at the point of faith, repentance, and baptism.  

In the past, some have argued that the word “for” in the passage means “because,” because of the remission of sins.  There is no truth in it but for the sake of argument let us pursue the thought.  If that was so then you have forgiveness of sins before repentance of sins.  You can be forgiven without repentance.  If you repent and are baptized because your sins were already forgiven, forgiven by faith, then you were saved before you repented of your sins.  Saved without repentance.  Now it is easy to see that will not work.

I suppose another question, in due order, would be good to ask the faith-only people.  Had you been in the crowd that day on the Day of Pentecost and heard Peter’s preaching being subject to it yourself, one of the guilty ones, could you have walked away from it having believed it and repented and been saved without obeying Peter’s command to be baptized?  Their doctrine demands that if they are consistent.  And, in such a scenario could it truly be said you believed Peter’s preaching if you refused baptism?

Jesus said in a disputed passage, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.” (Mark 16:16 NKJV)  It is disputed because the ending of Mark is disputed.  But, in an undisputed passage Jesus says, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5 NKJV)  You cannot go to heaven without baptism. 

Finally, the faith-only position belittles the Great Commission for in it Jesus commanded baptism.  “Then Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20 NKJV)

Can you disobey Jesus and be saved?  He is “the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” (Heb. 5:9 NKJV) 

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Jesus Defines Repentance

The Bible clearly teaches that repentance is a command of God to all men (Acts 17:30) and that if we fail to repent we shall perish (Luke 13:3, 5). It is essential, then, that we come to a proper understanding of the meaning of repentance. What does it mean to repent? Jesus tells us, and we can find no higher authority on the subject than Christ himself. Let us hear what he has said.

"The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here." (Luke 11:32 NKJV)

The book of Jonah, where we are told about this, is a very short book of only 4 chapters, so it is not hard to find out what the men of Nineveh did which Jesus calls repentance.

Nineveh was a city God described as a wicked city (Jonah 1:2) to which God sent Jonah to give them the message that in 40 days Nineveh would be overthrown (Jonah 3:4). Now note the first response to this message.

"So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them." (Jonah 3:5 NKJV) Now belief is not repentance, but it is a prerequisite to it. Where there is no belief there will be no repentance; it is impossible. One might quit a sin for any number of reasons (health, reputation, family, etc.) without repenting. We say it is hard to get people to repent, and so it is, but why? One of the biggest reasons is failure to believe God, what he says in the scriptures.

What must one believe in order to repent? He must believe God is (Heb. 11:6). He must believe he stands guilty before God (Rom. 3:23, 1 John 1:8). He must believe he is a condemned man in his present state (Rom. 6:23). Belief is thus a necessary prerequisite to biblical repentance.

There are two or three passages in the New Testament that put repentance before belief (Acts 20:21, Heb. 6:1, Mark 1:15). I will make a comment or two and go on without going into a long excursion on those passages. Where the passages address a Jewish crowd, one must remember the Jewish people had believed in God for generations. They had sinned against God. They needed to repent of that and then believe something new to them — faith in Jesus. Jesus was new to the world.

The second comment I will make in passing is that the order of the wording does not necessarily imply that the one action preceded the other. Paul, in Rom. 10:9, puts confession before faith: "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (NKJV) Do you think Paul meant to imply that confession is to come before faith? How would that work? How could Jesus be Lord if God did not raise him from the dead — if you did not believe that he did? So we see that faith precedes the confession even though the word order is what it is. Faith must precede repentance if there is to be repentance.

Now back to Nineveh. The faith of the people of Nineveh was so strong that they had no doubt that what Jonah was telling them would come to pass. They saw themselves as a doomed people. They were confirmed believers that disaster was about to befall them.

Having believed, they then humbled themselves before God. All put on sackcloth from the least to the greatest (Jonah 3:5), they fasted (3:7), they cried to God (3:8). One of the hardest things for a man to do is humble himself before God and man. To admit sin is belittling to the proud.

Pride is a great destroyer of people and is something every person has to deal with in their life. Pride is one of the things God hates (Pro. 8:13). It is a forerunner of shame (Pro. 11:2) and comes before a fall (Pro. 16:18); it will bring a man low (Pro. 29:23). Those who are proud cannot humble themselves and confess they have sinned and repent. They will pay for their arrogant spirit. The men of Nineveh will not be of their number.

What more did the people of Nineveh do? Jonah 3:8 says the king decreed that "every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands." (NKJV) What did they do? They ceased doing evil.

Let us summarize the events that transpired here in a city that Jesus said repented. Here is what we have seen:

(1) People heard a message from God condemning them and believed it.
(2) This brought godly sorrow to their hearts.
(3) They humbled themselves and sought God, turning from their evil ways.

This sums up the process of repentance from beginning to end. Today, when we hear the gospel message, if we believe it we see we are in a condemned state before God. We are convicted in our hearts of our sins. Believing this brings sorrow to our hearts. If we are then willing to humble ourselves before God, seek him, and turn away from evil to do good, as defined by God in his word, we can rest assured that we have met the requirement for repentance, for we have fulfilled all the things the people of Nineveh did, and Jesus said they repented.

How long does it take to repent? It takes just as long as it takes you to be convicted in your heart and then determine with your will to cease your sin and turn to God in faith and obedience. Repentance is not reformation of life, for reformation of life is a result, or fruit, of repentance. Repentance is a matter of the heart and a determination of the mind or will.

One can hear a single gospel sermon and repent immediately if the heart is good and honest and tender toward God. Thus we have those 3,000 who repented on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 after hearing Peter's sermon. The Bible says of that day and of that preaching that when the people heard it "they were cut to the heart." (Acts 2:37 NKJV) They saw themselves as condemned before God and were ready and willing to repent. This Peter told them to do, as well as be baptized for the remission of sins. (Acts 2:38)

So, how long did it take them to repent? Not long. Just as long as it took to hear the preaching, believe it, be pricked in the heart, and as a result create a willingness of heart to seek God and turn away from evil. The time it takes to repent depends on the hardness of the heart. There will never be enough time for some hearts. For the good and honest heart it will not take long.

I want to deal very briefly with a few common misconceptions before closing. Many believe that sorrow for sin is repentance and that the giving over of the will to God is faith. Neither is true. Godly sorrow for sin leads to repentance and is not repentance itself. "For godly sorrow produces repentance." (2 Cor. 7:10 NKJV) I might add, not all sorrow for sin is godly. Prisons are full of people who are sorry for their sin because they got caught, but God and his will has no part in their thinking.

The giving over of the will to God is often called faith, but God calls it repentance. True, the giving over of the will is based on faith but is not faith itself, but rather repentance. We ought to call Bible things by Bible names, as it allows us to reason more correctly.

Reformation of life can also easily be misconstrued as repentance. You can turn away from doing evil for various reasons. Men quit adultery for fear their wife will find out and their marriage be destroyed. Others quit cheating on their taxes for fear of getting caught. The list could go on. This kind of reformation of life is not repentance, nor does it have anything to do with repentance. God is left out of the picture. All concerns are over worldly matters and relationships, not God.

Repentance is repentance from sin, and thus God is always in view in true repentance. He is not in view in reformation of life for worldly reasons.

True repentance results in a reformation of life growing out of faith and a seeking of God. It means necessarily a turning away from sin to righteousness. One ends up with a changed life because of a changed outlook. The proper order of events is godly sorrow first, resulting in repentance (a changed outlook — a changed will), that leads to reformation of life.

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