BAPTISM WITH THE HOLY GHOST

 

  Peter was sent to the Gentile centurion Cornelius by the Holy Spirit and Cornelius was positioned by God to call on Peter to question. Cornelius was already a strong believer and a man of much faith, but he was missing something; he had never been baptized!

  John’s baptism was for repentance in preparation for the remission of sins, but the baptism of Jesus was for the remission of sins. Cornelius had neither but was still a disciple. What stood in the way? Gentiles were an unclean people. It was preposterous that any who were unclean would be accepted as clean! Then “The Voice answered me (Peter) again from heaven, ‘What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common’” (Acts 11:9) in answer to Peter’s viewpoint that Gentiles were unclean. The Gentiles were unclean because they ate things not acceptable to the Jews.

  The “Voice” was Jesus speaking, and by then His Spirit upon His glorification (John 7:39), was the Holy Ghost of Jesus. Jesus’s “Ghost” manifested Himself audibly just as back in the Garden of Eden where it is written, “They (Adam and Eve) heard the Voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8). Adam and Eve heard Jesus, and Peter did, and Cornelius heard the Voice as well!

  Adam and Eve were not Jewish nor even Hebrew. They were mankind, and the Voice speaks to all people because He loves mankind. Consider John 3:16, ”For God so loved the world…” The “world” in the beginning was Adam and Eve. Eve was the mother of all living (Gen 3:20). Since the beginning of the world, Jesus was Lord of all (Acts 10:36). When Peter was considering the Gentiles, he said, “I perceive that God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34). God is still not a respecter of people and neither is He a respecter of organizations.

  Gentiles were not only different in dietary habits but of a different race of people than the Jews. However, this commentary is not about racial differences, but about those who believe that only they are Jesus’s chosen and peculiar people (1 Pet 2:9). Before the Holy Ghost came to the Gentiles, only the Jews were God’s chosen and peculiar people (Deut 14:2). Jews were proud of their favored position and looked down on lesser people. Gentiles like Cornelius could act  as if they were Christians but were unfit to be Christians because they were not special people. Peter called them “common people,” but God disagreed (Acts 11:9).

  It turns out that Gentiles had only a different diet than Jews. God did not see racial features or physical peculiarities nor where they met to worship; He saw only Cornelius and his household, all of whom sought the truth about Jesus. Jews required a sign, but Greeks (Gentiles) reason (1 Cor 1:22). It turns out that it is reasonable to Gentiles if Jews could receive the Holy Ghost that they should too! All turned out well:

¹⁴ Who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved. ¹⁵ And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. ¹⁶ Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. ¹⁷ Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God? ¹⁸ When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life. (Acts 11:14-18)

  Peter explained to the Jewish disciples of Christ what it takes to be saved. The Holy Ghost fell on the Gentiles of Caesarea in Cornelius’s house just as it had on the Jews in Jerusalem. Location nor race were obstacles and neither was their unclean diet. Although the Romans were not Jews, they believed in the same God. Why should they not be Christians as well?

  Cornelius and company were baptized with the Holy Ghost by Jesus; not by water as with John. Cornelius did what Jesus had told the apostles, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), and do what? “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16) from damnation. What had just happened with Cornelius? Peter, the apostle, went out into the world (Caesarea) preached the gospel to the “creature” (Cornelius) who already believed. Then Cornelius was baptized, not with water, but baptized with the Holy Ghost, and subsequently, the disciples recognized them as disciples like them.

  Cornelius believed, but the Ghost of Jesus baptized Him. It was not what Cornelius did, but what God did by grace. He was as graceful to the Gentiles as He had been to the Jews.

  Now let us switch gears to grace. Peter was graceful. He went to the Gentiles to share what he had experienced in Jerusalem. He did not go to a special people, but to a common people, but they were special to God. Those who think they are the only true Church would not have gone to Caesarea. God would not have had enough grace for common people. Gentiles could have never been part of the Jewish Church just because they were different. They did not have the grace that the Jews had but they wanted it. Peter did not tell them that they had to go to Jerusalem, to their house, to be like them for God is not a respecter of persons.

  God could do with the Gentiles what he did for the Jews without them going anywhere or changing their identification. Later, the Gentiles were allowed to be baptized with water because they had already been saved with the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Baptism with water was their testimony that they were theretofore disciples of Christ. It was not water that saved but Jesus in the form of the Holy Ghost! Most certainly, to be saved requires Jesus saving, and he does that not for repentance for the remission of sins, but for the remission of sins. Cornelius had already repented and stayed on top of repentance each day.

  Churches in contemporary times act as the Jews did. You must “eat” what they “eat” and be one of them to be saved. That is not only very Jewish of them, but Catholic as well. “Catholic” means “the universal true church” but the reformers recognized that it was universal, but it was not true. Some people today have restored, not the true Church, but the Catholic pretense that they are the only true church.

  Will that keep them out of Heaven? No, but they endeavor to keep other Christians out of Heaven. Entry, it seems, is not through the cherubim guarded entryway but through their denomination’s doors. Denomination? Yes, their de facto Jewish sect!

(picture credit: Life, Hope, and Truth):