Scripture
Our verse for today comes from Acts 8:15, “Peter and John went down to Samaria where they prayed that the new believers would receive the Holy Spirit.”
Background
Down in Samaria, which is actually north of Jerusalem but down the hill a ways, Philip has stirred up quite a situation. In preaching Christ to the people, many of them are actually believing the message and getting baptized. Even the town’s leading public figure, Simon the Great, is said to have believed and been baptized. So there is swelling up amongst the folk a significant movement. And when word gets back to the apostles in Jerusalem, they send Peter and John to go check it out, for a strange phenomenon is occurring in that those who are becoming Christians are not yet receiving the Holy Spirit.
And for you and me to read that, it sounds and feels a little odd. For we have also read so many other New Testament verses that teach the indwelling of the Spirit for all Christians, that we all are baptized into one Spirit, that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and so on. So it feels uncomfortable to think that a person was getting saved but the Spirit did not fill them. But I think something unusual is going on here, and it has to do specifically with the start of the church and the Samaritans.
Application
Recall how the Jews felt about the Samaritans. And, remember how the two peoples both claimed to worship God correctly, and did so with complete disdain for how and where the other did it. Also, keep in mind that the Book of Acts records the events and happenings of the birth of Christ’s church, going from the Jews who believed in God to the few followers of Jesus in Jerusalem to places and numbers no local fisherman would have ever dreamed of. Things were happening that God required and used to birth and spread His church that were intended for just that time. And so, when the Samaritans were believing the gospel, it makes sense that God wanted them and the Jewish believers to be united in one Spirit. So He made sure to have His apostles deliver and witness the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to them, to eliminate any possible schism that the two peoples had their own versions of true Christianity. God essentially did the same thing when the earliest Gentiles were converted, making one of all peoples, and then no more. From then on, the Holy Spirit filled new believers at conversion, and became the working evidence of a regenerate heart, just as Jesus promised and the epistles explain.
Charge
As we seek Him today, listen to the Holy Spirit, who has been with you from the moment of your new birth.
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
Editor Comment: In a divided world, this reminder that God intentionally united hostile peoples in one Spirit still calls the church to guard its unity today.