God Brings Samaritans Into the Church

Question from Quora: Can you explain Acts 8:12-17?

Few people catch the meaning of this passage, so this is a good question.

The theme sentence of of Acts is chapter 1, verse 8. Before departing Earth for heaven, Jesus told the disciples, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. 

The events in Acts 8 form one of the high points of the outline.  If you understand the outline, you understand the significance of 8:12-17.  That outline unfolds as follows:

Jerusalem

In chapter 2, the Holy Spirit makes His grand entrance. The Holy Spirit descends on the disciples, causing the believers to speak in languages they had no way of knowing, along with other signs. This is followed by Peter preaching the gospel and many joining the disciples.

The language phenomenon had prophetic significance. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul cites Old Testament prophecies to explain the primary purpose of miraculously speaking in foreign languages. The spectacular event that day was a warning to the Jewish nation that they had come under God’s judgment for rejecting their Messiah. As prophesied by Daniel and other prophets, Judea was destroyed by waves of Roman armies in 67 to 70 AD.

The Grand Entrance of the Holy Spirit marked a revolutionary change. Previously, He had come upon just a few believers for specific purposes such as guiding a king, empowering a warrior, or delivering revelation through a prophet. Now He had come upon all believers, not just for a narrow ministry, but to abide. What had previously been a temporary or conditional gift now became a permanent, sealing gift. Whereas only a chosen few had received ministries from God, now all received ministries and were empowered with “spiritual gifts.”

Judea

Chapter 8 briefly describes how the believers were scattered throughout Judea by persecution. Jerusalem represented the initiation of the gospel among the Jews, and Judea represents spreading of the gospel among the Jews.

Samaria (chapter 8)

The Samaritans had a mixed heritage, having descended from a mixture of Israelite and local ancestors.  Some followed the God of Israel, but most followed the religions of their non-Israelite ancestors or of the occupying armies.

The Jews descended primarily from Judah, one of the few families of Israel that had not been scattered into the world by invaders.  They were very inwardly focused.  God had commissioned Israel as a nation of priests to the world, but they had failed to maintain their own religion, let alone spread it.  In their minds, they were God’s chosen, and that was that.  They considered their half brothers, the Samaritans, unclean, second-class, and enemies. So what was about to happen required a major shift of thinking. 

Up to that time, all of the Christians were Jews.  Some began to recognize what God was doing, but it took decades for others.  Phillip went among the Samaritans anyway and preached Christ to them.

• 12 But when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized, men and women alike.

(The story of Simon is a tangent, so I'll skip verse 13.)

Shockingly to the Jews, the Samaritans converted. But something was missing. There was no miraculous evidence that the Holy Spirit had come upon the Samaritans.

At this point, we need to reach farther back for context. In Matthew 16:19, Jesus tells Peter,

• I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

Acts 8 is a an example of the fulfillment of Peter using those metaphorical keys. (It has nothing to do with creating a permanent office or making Peter into a “pope.”)

• Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit.  For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. (verses 14-16).

Here, Peter fulfills his commission. He and John pray for the Samaritans to receive the full blessings of salvation, just like the Jewish believers had in Jerusalem. So the gospel expands outside of the Jews, and the Samaritans are now included.

• 17 Then they began laying their hands on them, and they were receiving the Holy Spirit.

The passage does not state how Peter and John knew that the Samaritans had received the Holy Spirit, but it is safe to infer that something miraculous happened. The likely possibilities are that some began prophesying and speaking in foreign languages in a manner similar to what had happened in Jerusalem.

You may notice that I don’t call it speaking in tongues. According to Acts 2:5–11, it was not the unintelligible babbling that you hear today. People from foreign lands heard the speakers in their own native languages, and 15 specific languages were understood by unconverted bystanders.

The evidence showed several things: God had expanded the blessings of belief and ministry beyond the Jews.  Previously, the Holy Spirit had only come upon people of Israel.  The Jews thought they had a unique claim on their relationship with God. This destroyed that misconception.  Since the Holy Spirit came upon people for the purpose of ministry, this meant that not only belief, but also the priesthood, was being taken away. And again, the sign warned the Jews of the destruction to come.

Thus, Peter had fulfilled his role, bringing, so to speak, the Grand Entrance of the Holy Spirit to the Samaritans.

To the Ends of the World

In chapter 10, we see the gospel and the Holy Spirit expand to a Roman soldier, Cornelius, and his household. The Samaritans were half Israelite, but Romans were unclean occupiers from a distant land!  Even Peter needed special visions to prepare him for dealing with a Roman.

After Cornelius converted and spoke in foreign languages, Peter had some explaining to do back in Jerusalem before the council of apostles.  They were offended that Peter had even eaten with gentiles.  Once again, God had expanded the group called “God’s people,” and the Jewish Christians had to adjust how they saw themselves and the rest of the world.

The remainder of Acts mostly describes the continued expansion of the gospel to Asia Minor and Greece. We even see the church’s first heresy when Jewish believers demanded that gentile believers start living according to Jewish customs. Although Acts shifts to following Paul's evangelistic journeys, Peter had used his "keys" to reflect that God had unlocked the kingdom for the Jews, the Samaritans, and the rest of the world.

Note to Charismatic and Pentecostal brethren: Christ’s prophesy in Acts 1:8 was fulfilled. The opening of the gospel and the grand entrance of the Holy Spirit to expanding circles of people does not constitute a pattern that applies today, and the prophetic meaning of “tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:20-22 plus Deuteronomy 28:49, Isaiah 28:11,12, and Jeremiah 5:15, and their contexts) was fulfilled over 1900 years ago.

Note to Catholic apologists: Peter in Matthew 16:18 is a masculine noun, denoting a stone by itself, whereas rock is a feminine noun, denoting a formation in the ground.  The difference denotes a play on words in which Peter and the rock cannot be conflated or confused.  In addition, throughout the Old Testament, Rock is a name for God, in general (Psalm 18:2), and for Christ, specifically (1 Corinthians 10:4). Even Peter used the word that way (1 Peter 2:8). This rock could not, therefore, refer to Peter. It had to refer to Peter’s confession.  To call Peter the Rock on which Christ founded the church is to equate Peter with God, and that is blasphemous.

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler; permission to use excerpts is granted for personal, not-profit use.  Please give credit where credit is due.  

The New Covenant Obsoletes the Old

Link: Hebrews 8:6-13

As Greg Koukl says, “never read a Bible verse.” Always check to see how the context gives definition to the passage.

The widest context is the Bible as a whole, so any interpretation must be consistent with the whole teachings of the Bible. The next layer of context is the testament, new or old, in which the passage appears. In this case, the interpretation must be consistent with the rest of the New Testament, but since Old Testament passages are cited, one should consider their contexts as well.

The Old Testament describes the old covenant, that is, the contract between God and Israel. The covenant promised security and worldly blessings to Israel if Israel would represent God to the world. Implied in that is that Israel would obey God’s directions. This was necessary in order to remain morally qualified to represent God.

The New Testament describes a new covenant. The new covenant removes Israel’s exclusive right to represent God, giving it to all followers of Christ. It also unveils more about God’s nature, replaces a covering of sins with an actual washing away of sins, and replaces an unstable relationship between God and a nation with a secure relationship between God and individuals.

The next layer is the audience and theme of the book or letter. Hebrews was written to — guess who? — first-century Hebrews (the ethnic group) after the Jewish establishment (their religion) had rejected and killed its Messiah and begun deadly persecution of their Messiah’s followers.

The book of Hebrews contrasts ways that the new covenant was superior to the old covenant. In fact, if you outlined the book, you would see point after point asserting how the new of-Christ faith solved problems and provided blessings that the Jewish system could not.

The final layer of context is the chapter itself. Chapter 8 can be outlined thus:

• Verses 1–7 — Christ’s role as High Priest is superior to that of the Jewish priests because He mediates a better covenant. (Mediate, in this context, means bringing two parties together to ensure that they understand and meet all the conditions of the covenant.) To discover the many reasons the new covenant is better, read the whole passage, and then read the whole book.
• Verses 8–12 — The writer supports this theme with citations from the Old Testament.
• Verse 13 — In concluding, the writer emphasizes that, when a new covenant replaces an old covenant, the old covenant becomes void. Accepting this required a major mind-change for the audience, Jewish Christians. Even for people like James, the half-brother of Jesus, and the apostle Peter, this change required many years and miraculous evidence to accept. For more details, read the books of Acts and Galatians.

Verse 7 states that God found fault with the old covenant. Since God was the Author of the old covenant, this might seem to mean God made a mistake. However, as we continue reading, we reach a different conclusion.

A covenant is only as good as the parties to the covenant. The fault was not in the covenant, but in Israel’s failure to fulfill it’s duties. God found fault with the people… for they did not continue in my covenant…, says the LORD (verses 8–9).

One reason the old covenant “failed” from Israel’s perspective was that it depended on — to put it in modern terms — levels of bureaucracy between God and individuals. The words of God were contained in scrolls, their distribution depended on “the experts,” and the execution of their provisions depended on corruptible men.

In contrast, under the new covenant, I (God) will put My laws into their (the people’s) minds, and I will write them (the laws) upon their hearts (verse 10). In other words, instead of needing to depend on “the experts,” individuals would be enabled to obey God on their own, and they would be accountable not for obeying the letter of the law, but rather for obeying the spirit of the law. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people makes the relationship very personal — not just a socialized, collective relationship, but rather, an intimate, one-on-one relationship.

Many “Christian” churches, including some of the largest denominations, cling to the form of the old covenant system. They insert “experts,” “prophets,” “priests,” or over-controlling pastors between members and God. A biblical, new covenant church will work hard to bring people and God into personal relationships and edify people so they can stand in that relationship without excessive reliance on the human organization.
Verse 11 needs a bit of background. Directions, such as those in Leviticus about the design of the tabernacle and the conduct of feasts and sacrifices, were highly symbolic. As verse 5 says, they served as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. Many of them stand out for symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice.

This was also true of prophecies of events that were, in Old Testament times, future events, such as the two comings of Christ — first to provide redemption, and later to take delivery of that which He redeemed.

Reading the prophecies was like looking and seeing a mountain; but when you walk over to the side or walk past the mountain, you see that there were actually two mountains. Since they align in time, you could not differentiate between them. But when you have hiked past the one, you can see that one is in the past and the other is yet future.

The passage(s) cited in verse 11 compress two ages into one description. The first age (or mountain, in the last paragraph) concerns the current age, whereas the second age (the more distant mountain) concerns the age when Christ will have returned, established His reign on Earth, and re-established Israel as the center of His kingdom. In that future time, they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen and everyone his brother, saying, ‘know the Lord,’ for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them. The relevant part is the emphasis on establishing that personal relationship between God and us without the interference of, and dependence on, an intervening human organization.

The citation in verse 12 foreshadows another passage in Hebrews. Chapter 10 explains the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice over the old covenant sacrifices. Whereas it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (verse 4), Christ offered one sacrifice for sins for all time (verse 12), so that by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified (verse 14).

Christ does not require continuous sacrificing, as in a particular church. Their continuous sacrifice is like the flawed old testament sacrifices and makes people dependent on the organization. Christ’s sacrifice was complete and perfect. For those who trust in it, it perfects them before the great Judge, washing away all their past, present, and future sins.

(You will find a number of the ideas in chapter 8 repeated in chapter 10.)

In verse 13’s conclusion, When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear. That is, the old covenant has no legal effect on anyone who enters into the new covenant.

However, although the old covenant has no legal affect on those in the new covenant, it remains useful for three things: First, through its symbolism, it confirms the new covenant. Second, the portions defining moral conduct remain useful for defining how to love one another.

Third, defining how to love one another has a darker side. It teaches us about our inability to justify ourselves before God. Many fail to grasp this lesson, but it is explicitly taught.

• Therefore the Law [the commands in the old covenant] has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24).
• Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [those who think they are “good”], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:19–20).
• [A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… (Romans 3:23).

In contrast to justification being out of reach of our efforts, God offers redemption as a gift.

• He [Messiah] shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities (Isaiah 53:11).
• …being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24).
• For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8–9).

This excludes any mixture of works and faith, or merit and grace. It also excludes any specious idea that the gift enables one to earn salvation.

• But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace (Romans 11:6).
• Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh [that is, works of obedience]? (Galatians 3:3).

Rather than insulting the Giver by trying to earn the gift and pridefully saying, “I am a good person,” the old covenant teaches us to say, “I would defile heaven with my guilt. I need a Savior and His gift of salvation.” And when that gift has been received, one is no longer “under the Law” of the old covenant. For the Christian, the old covenant becomes obsolete.