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.