Acts 2 gets most of the attention — three thousand souls added in a single day is hard to follow. But Acts 3 is worth sitting with. Peter and John go up to the temple at the hour of prayer and pass a man who has been lame from birth, carried daily to the gate called Beautiful to beg from whoever walks in. He asks them for money. Peter tells him, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). And the man stands, and walks, and goes into the temple leaping and praising God.
Try to picture it. A man who has never taken a single step in his life is handed something worth more than any coin, and he cannot contain himself. The crowd comes running. And when Peter has their attention, he preaches — and the sermon lands on one sentence worth memorizing: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19).
Three Things Peter Asks For
- Repent. The word means to change one’s mind — and Thayer adds, to change it for the better, “heartily to amend with abhorrence of one’s past sins.” It is not a nicely worded apology. It is a change that redirects a life. Believers in Nigeria sing a song when someone comes up out of the water: There’s been a great change since I was born. The things I used to do, I do them no more. What I used to say, I say it no more. Where I used to go, I go there no more. Paul told Agrippa that he preached that men “should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:20). We cannot pursue the things of the world and follow Jesus faithfully at the same time.
- Be converted. The word simply means changed — and it has to go all the way through. John records something unsettling: among the rulers many believed on Jesus, “but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him… for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12:42-43). They believed and were not converted. They were intelligent men who could have led their families and their nation to Christ, and they stayed silent because they loved their standing more.
- Have your sins blotted out. Paul writes that in Christ we are “circumcised with the circumcision made without hands… buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God” (Colossians 2:11-12). Notice the phrasing. A circumcision made without hands is not something a person performs on himself. It is done to him.
Blotted Out Means Gone
This is where the language of Scripture gets generous. God says through Isaiah, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins” (Isaiah 43:25). David writes that “as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). The law of Moses could only push the account forward year after year. The blood of Jesus closes it. And once a person is walking in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son keeps on cleansing from all sin (1 John 1:7).
There is a reason it works that way. Baptism is a surrender — you lay back in someone else’s arms and let go. It is not something you accomplish; it is something done to you. And that posture is exactly the point.
Everything Here Aims at One Thing
Peter ends by saying God sent His Son “to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities” (Acts 3:26). That was the purpose Christ came for, and it is the singular purpose of Valley Church of Christ: helping people go to heaven. Every part of the work here is meant to end up there. It is why a building was built and why members borrowed and labored for years to make it happen — so that people could have their sins removed. That is the whole reason.
A Call to Respond
Peter had already told that crowd exactly what was at stake: “And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people” (Acts 3:23). It is not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
The lesson closed with a man named Zearle. He came to church where the preacher grew up — there every Sunday, quiet, always around. Then one Sunday he wasn’t, and word came that he was sick in the hospital up in Amarillo. A boy of eleven or twelve rode a hundred miles with his parents to go see him. When they walked into the room, the old man started crying — tears running down his cheeks, the way a boy had never seen a man cry — and he said, if I can get back to that church building, I’m going to be baptized.
Weeks later the old pickup pulled up out front. He got out, helped his wife down, and walked in. That boy could hardly sit through the service, peeking over his shoulder during the invitation song, certain that any second now Zearle would come forward. First verse. Second verse. Third verse. The song ended. That evening, the same thing. And the next Sunday, and the one after that, for weeks and weeks. He never moved.
And then one day he died.
How many sermons does a person need to hear? How many chances does a person get? Nobody knows the number, and nobody is told when they have used the last one. Ananias asked Saul the only question that finally matters: “And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16).
Do not worry about what anyone thinks, or about the walk to the front. Those things do not matter. What matters is having your sins washed away in the blood of Jesus. You have a chance right now — take it.