NOTES for Act 2:38-43
38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. |
39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. |
40 And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. |
41 Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. |
42 And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. |
43 And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. |
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The Church is young and full of strength, strength breathed into it by the Spirit of the Lord. Those being saved are added by the thousands, many signs are performed, all the believers have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and remain in the fear of God; their life is a model of the full life of a Christian (see Acts 2:42). Not life at all, but a dream... But a dream is still something mostly unattainable, something invented to ease the conscience. People say: this is an ideal incompatible with reality. But what the first Christians live by is precisely the real reality, more real than what we live in now.
And in His conversation with Nicodemus, the Lord speaks exactly about this new being, about the Kingdom of God that is within them and among them (see Luke 17:21, Matt. 18:20). Through repentance, through baptism by water and the Spirit, through birth from above, we can enter, or more precisely, we give Christ the opportunity to bring us into this other life (see John 3:13). We may not yet have noticed it ourselves, but He has already done everything. What remains for us is only to believe this as we believe nothing else, to believe so that we gradually become aware of what has happened to us...
Readings for 7 April 2026
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