March 8: Acts 2 36-39

Key Verse: Acts 2 38
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Devotion:
How many times have you got yourself into trouble? How many of those times was the punishment for you actions harsh in your eyes? … and yet you still did it … We have laws and rules about how we should behave and when we break those rules and laws, we have to face the punishment which has been described for breaking them.

We have a problem in how we live and how we behave; it is not according to God’s ways and His wishes. He has also given us rules about how we should live our lives and has laid down the punishment we should face if we choose to break those rules! Just the same as we have our rules and regulations in our earthly lives, we have rules and regulation about our lives with God. The problem being we don’t really have a hope of not breaking God’s rules and regulations; not because they are too strict but because we have a nature which is against those rules and regulations!

Now imagine being a person who has to face a judge who declares how you have been an accomplice to a murder and we have to face the punishment for that murder. We may not have been the ones who killed the person in question, we may have just stood by while it happened because we were too scared to do anything else – but the fact remains, we are still accomplices!

The Jews were faced with this decision with Peter telling them how they were accomplices to the murder of Jesus and now they were being faced with the punishment which was written down for that. The punishment was death! When they realised what they had done, they thought there was no way out and wanted to know what they could do to try and get out of paying the due punishment. Peter’s answer may well have surprised them – all they would have to do was to admit to what they had done, say they were sorry and show others how sorry they were by being baptised. The same is open for us as well – we just have to say we are sorry and mean it. We don’t have to be baptised, but it can be seen as a public acknowledgement of our admission of guilt.

Points to Ponder:
Do you know what punishment you face?

Are you willing to go public and say sorry to God?