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Philip & the apostles knew that the Samarians had not received the Spirit even though they had been water baptised - Acts 8:12-16Are you sure it's an "experience?" A lot of is would say that we're born from water and the Spirit when we become followers of Jesus, typically via baptism (the water part).
Note that Peter laid hands on them and prayed for them to receive the Holy Spirit. As I understand it, in the early church baptism included both water and laying on of hands and praying for the reception of the Holy Spirit. It sounds to me like in this case only the water part had been done. The person baptizing them hadn't prayed for the gift of the Holy Spirit.Philip & the apostles knew that the Samarians had not received the Spirit even though they had been water baptised - Acts 8:12-16
- how did they know?
But here's a Lutheran response (Scripture passages are provided in case you want them):
1) You don't do anything to be saved. Salvation isn't something you can achieve by trying hard enough, doing the right things, thinking the right things, or believing the right things. Salvation is God graciously saving you, by sending His Son, the Lord Jesus, who suffered death on the cross for all our sins, and who rose from the dead as victor over sin, death, hell, and the devil. It is only Christ who is our salvation. Salvation is therefore by grace alone, that is, by the abundant kindness and generosity of God which He has for us. God acts upon us to grant us faith, faith to trust in Christ, and we receive this faith as a gift from God, not of ourselves, through the preaching of the Word and the Sacraments.
"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast." - Ephesians 2:4-9
Acts 16:27-31 (KJV)1. What must I do to be saved and spend an eternity in Heaven with Jesus Christ?
Acts 8:12,35-37 (KJV)2. What is saving faith?
Romans 10:8-173. How do you get or have saving faith?
Note that Peter laid hands on them and prayed for them to receive the Holy Spirit. As I understand it, in the early church baptism included both water and laying on of hands and praying for the reception of the Holy Spirit. It sounds to me like in this case only the water part had been done. The person baptizing them hadn't prayed for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
See Act 8:17 and also the account starting in 8:18. It's clear that the critical thing was the laying on of hands. Nothing is said about them not reporting some experience.
Jesus is the baptiser in the Holy Spirit, he neither needs, nor appoints any intermediaries.Of course the Spirit is not limited to the laying on of hands, any more than faith can only be present when someone has been baptized. Nevertheless, if someone came to faith and hadn’t been baptized, we would baptize them. I believe the meaning of Acts 8 is that they had not formally received the Holy Spirit. The emphasis in this passage is not upon a specific experience that they were missing but upon the authority of the Apostles to bestow the Holy Spirit.
That was Simon the Sorceror's understanding of how it worked. He was wrong.That's the whole point of the account of Simon. Simon wasn't concerned that he had missed a conversion experience. He wanted the power to lay hands on people and convey the Holy Spirit, like the Apostles had.
Indeed given the overall views of Luke, if there was anything intended beyond the formal laying on of hands, it was not that the men had missed a conversion experience, but that they didn’t have the visible, supernatural gifts of the Spirit. They had already been born from above in their baptism.
This is the reason why Jesus will reply to some that He never knew them. Those who are so busy trying to work their way to heaven will find out that grace is a gift and there is no working your way to heaven.. Belief and faith is just the start of your Christian walk with Christ. Where you end up, either in heaven or hell is 100% based on your works, in obedience with what Christ has given us to follow in the bible.
Belief and faith is just the start of your Christian walk with Christ. Where you end up, either in heaven or hell is 100% based on your good works toward others.
Where in the Bible does it say that the Spirit is received by the laying on of hands? As a matter of fact, the disciples received the Holy Spirit without any laying on of hands.Of course the Spirit is not limited to the laying on of hands, any more than faith can only be present when someone has been baptized. Nevertheless, if someone came to faith and hadn’t been baptized, we would baptize them. I believe the meaning of Acts 8 is that they had not formally received the Holy Spirit. The emphasis in this passage is not upon a specific experience that they were missing but upon the authority of the Apostles to bestow the Holy Spirit. That's the whole point of the account of Simon. Simon wasn't concerned that he had missed a conversion experience. He wanted the power to lay hands on people and convey the Holy Spirit, like the Apostles had.
Indeed given the overall views of Luke, if there was anything intended beyond the formal laying on of hands, it was not that the men had missed a conversion experience, but that they didn’t have the visible, supernatural gifts of the Spirit. They had already been born from above in their baptism.
As to what happened with the laying on of hands after the Apostles’ time: Laying on of hands was considered part of baptism in the early Church. It still is, in the Orthodox churches. In the West, because of the tradition that it had to be done by a bishop (as they were viewed as the modern equivalent of the Apostles), and bishops weren’t always available at baptism, laying on of hands slowly separated from baptism, and become the separate sacrament of confirmation.
Protestants vary in how they handle these matters. I just checked the official baptismal ritual for my church (the PCUSA). It's only a guide for what actually happens in churches, but it includes laying on of hands, and a prayer that the Holy Spirit be present with the person. Since Protestants normally don't have an separate sacrament of confirmation, you'd hope that their baptisms would include the laying on of hands.
That's not to say that if you were baptized without the laying on of hands you are necessarily lacking the Holy Spirit, but still, your baptism would not have conformed to Acts 8.
Peter & John understood that praying with people, laying on hands helps their faith but going through that process does nopt mean that the other person has therefore received God's Spirit. They waited for God's independent witness of speaking in tongues.It was not just Simon’s understanding that the Holy Spirit came from the Apostles’ laying on of hands.
“17 Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. 18 Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money,”
While the surrounding circumstances of every conversion is different, the sign when one receives the Spirit is the same.Again, the Holy Spirit is surely not restricted. As you pointed out, in Acts 10, people had the gift of the Holy Spirit, and clearly had repented and had faith, before they were baptized. But Acts 10 was in some ways unusual. Peter seems to have still needed convincing that Gentiles can really be full Christians. God was making a point to him.
Putting all the veses together, what is clear is that the laying on of hands is used to help people's faith if they have not already received the Spirit, but is not a requirement, neither is it the sign that someone has received the Spirit.See also 2 Tim 1:6. We don't know that the laying on of hands was part of his baptism, but the author seems to think that the spirit of power came from the laying on of hands. Also Heb 6:2, though the significance of laying on of hands isn't clear in that passage.
Ok. I am so confused by all the different websites I read online. So I am asking here.
1. What must I do to be saved and spend an eternity in Heaven with Jesus Christ?
2. What is saving faith?
3. How do you get or have saving faith?
By stopping to sin and by starting to love and the only way to do that is to read and follow the 10 commandments and whoo follows the 10 commandments loves God and his neighbour (1 John 5:1-3) because who loves God doesn't follow other gods and who loves his neighbour doesn't kill.Ok. I am so confused by all the different websites I read online. So I am asking here.
1. What must I do to be saved and spend an eternity in Heaven with Jesus Christ?
2. What is saving faith?
3. How do you get or have saving faith?
Where in the Bible does it say that the Spirit is received by the laying on of hands? As a matter of fact, the disciples received the Holy Spirit without any laying on of hands.
Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to a believer. The apostles did not.
By stopping to sin and by starting to love and the only way to do that is to read and follow the 10 commandments and whoo follows the 10 commandments loves God and his neighbour (1 John 5:1-3) because who loves God doesn't follow other gods and who loves his neighbour doesn't kill.
James 2:-8;11
8 If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well.
11 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.
James 2:14-17
14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
And good or bad works are again ruled by the 10 commandments.
You are telling all the opposite of James chapter 2, how's that?I'm always sometimes amused by those who seem to have an obsession with the Decalogue, as though there were only ten commandments given by God to the children of Israel.
Firstly: God gave hundreds of instructions to the children of Israel, what we call the Torah. Historically the Jewish rabbis have enumerated that there were 613 distinct mitzvot given in Torah.
Secondly: Anyone who bothers to read the New Testament should immediately realize that Christians are not expected to observe the Torah, as the Torah was part of the distinct and unique covenant God made with the children of Israel in the past.
Thirdly: Neither the mitzvot of Torah nor our efforts toward righteous works can save us or have any merit in justifying us, as the Scriptures say, the Law is powerless to justify.
So no works, neither works of the Law/Torah nor works of the flesh benefit us in anyway in attaining righteousness before God. Righteousness before God is found exclusively in Jesus Christ, and it is ours solely by the grace of God through faith.
Those who teach that salvation is through human efforts in attempting to be righteous should probably spend a good bit of time contemplating St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians. Further, it runs very near the heresy of Pelagius who denied human inability, insisted on the human capacity to be righteous through his or her own efforts, and thereby denied the central place of grace--and ultimately--the Gospel itself.
No Christian church teaches that we can be saved by our own merits, because such teaching is quite explicitly heretical.
-CryptoLutheran
That's not my fault if you don't know the difference between the Decalogue and the Moral law, Social law, etc. I am so amused you don't know the difference and which you set up pompous words as "Heretical" without even knowing about what Scriptures you are talking about, and without knowing my thought about salvation; the first thing is to obey to the Decalogue cause the fulfilment of it is love, because if you ignore the Decalogue and you commit sin then you have no love for thy neighbour nor love for God; obviously this is not the only thing we must do for to be saved, because we should believe in Jesus and be baptised, we should have mercy cause that will be the measure set on us, and many other things we need to do to be saved. The Moral,Social law, the one you are talking about (but you don't know it) was an hard way to put in practice the Decalogue (eye for eye) and if I am not wrong you are mixing also the ceremonial law without even knowing it, and in plus you shacked the Decalogue inside them and made a huge cocktail.I'm always sometimes amused by those who seem to have an obsession with the Decalogue, as though there were only ten commandments given by God to the children of Israel.
Firstly: God gave hundreds of instructions to the children of Israel, what we call the Torah. Historically the Jewish rabbis have enumerated that there were 613 distinct mitzvot given in Torah.
Secondly: Anyone who bothers to read the New Testament should immediately realize that Christians are not expected to observe the Torah, as the Torah was part of the distinct and unique covenant God made with the children of Israel in the past.
Thirdly: Neither the mitzvot of Torah nor our efforts toward righteous works can save us or have any merit in justifying us, as the Scriptures say, the Law is powerless to justify.
So no works, neither works of the Law/Torah nor works of the flesh benefit us in anyway in attaining righteousness before God. Righteousness before God is found exclusively in Jesus Christ, and it is ours solely by the grace of God through faith.
Those who teach that salvation is through human efforts in attempting to be righteous should probably spend a good bit of time contemplating St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians. Further, it runs very near the heresy of Pelagius who denied human inability, insisted on the human capacity to be righteous through his or her own efforts, and thereby denied the central place of grace--and ultimately--the Gospel itself.
No Christian church teaches that we can be saved by our own merits, because such teaching is quite explicitly heretical.
-CryptoLutheran
This is the reason why Jesus will reply to some that He never knew them. Those who are so busy trying to work their way to heaven will find out that grace is a gift and there is no working your way to heaven.
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