As Paul's sermon continues in Acts 13, he emphasizes God's actions, God's messianic promise, and repentance. John the Baptist preached repentance which is thematic in Luke/Acts. Jesus is the Son of David who is the promised Savior. We discuss many passages in Luke/Acts that are about repentance. A key one is Luke 24:47 where Jesus commissions the disciples to preach "repentance for the forgiveness of sins to all the nations."

We have a robust discussion about the role of repentance and whether preaching it means teaching "salvation by works." We reject that idea and point out the even repentance is said to be "granted." Ordo salutus is Latin for "order of salvation" and we discuss the problem with trying to make a doctrine by forcing certain passages in Acts into an ordo salus dogma. Induction seeks to use specific incidents to build a logical necessity. But Acts does not yield a constant and consistent sequence such as repentance, baptism, receiving the Spirit, turning to the Lord, and other descriptions of Messianic salvation. The order and signs that accompany do not always follow the same pattern. Therefore many of the dogmatic claims that arise in church history do not follow, such as the baptism of the Holy Spirit being a second work of grace and that tongues are the sign of it. Many issues come up as we share testimonies as well. All of salvation in a work of grace alone through Christ and we need to keep that in mind.

Class handout and slides may be found under the Downloads tab.