The Apostle Peter has told the crowd that they helped to crucify their Messiah. At this point they, as Saul of Tarsus would later, asked the ultimate question: “What shall we do?” It is God-seekers’ attitude toward the Lord’s answer (we must obey His Word) that determines if he/she will follow Paul’s example of obedience to His Word or embrace Satan’s heathen doctrines and customs that form the foundation of Catholicism/Protestantism. As God said through Matthew (7:13,14), the vast majority will follow Satan, all the while believing that they are following the Lord. See Bait and Switch. Peter answers the people’s question, beginning at the beginning.

Verses thirty-eight and thirty-eight: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of (past) sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Later, Peter would tell another group of Jews the same thing, adding that conversion must accompany the removal of sins (3:10). Note that the infilling of the Holy Spirit accompanies true repentance (and conversion). The purpose of God’s giving the Holy Spirit is to empower us to overcome Satan’s temptations to sin. By removing sin from our lives we qualify to join Jesus in the Kingdom of God. This is made crystal clear in Revelation 3:21 where He noted that only those who overcome Satan and refuse to sin will sit with Him on His throne. Recall what the Lord said through Paul: “Therefore brethren, we are debtors, not to (obey the) flesh, to live after the flesh, for if you live after the flesh (sin-Rom. 6:23), you shall die; but if you, through the Spirit, do mortify (put to death) the deeds of the flesh (sin), you shall live. For AS MANY AS ARE LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD, (ONLY) THEY ARE THE SONS OF GOD” (Rom 8:12-14). To those who claim that because of Adam’s miraculous sin infusion we have no choice but to sin, the question is: Does the Holy Spirit lead us to sin? If so, then those who sin are sons of God in that they are led by His Spirit. This means that the Lord lied in Romans 8:12-14 and Romans 6:23. It also means that the wages of church sin is not death, as He tells us in His Holy Bible, but is in fact eternal life, as Satan told Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:4). Because the Institutional Church has rejected God’s Words and embraced Satan’s words, she now calls good evil and evil good (Isa. 5:20). Note that God pronounces a “woe” upon such people. See Revelation 8-12. L.J.