What Does "Calling on His name/Confessing" Mean? Acts 22:16

So my next scripture that I'd like you to address is Acts chapter 22 verse 16

Bro, okay. Here's what it says and now why do you wait rise and be baptized and wash away your sins?

Calling on his name. So it clearly seems to be the case that baptism and the washing away of your sins is

Very closely connected here And so it seems to support the idea that baptism is in fact necessary for the washing away of your sins

Which is obviously connected to this whole idea of salvation. I Actually love this verse because I remember just a little bit about me and my hometown and Jonesboro, Arkansas is

Church of Christ are everywhere. And so that's why it's a mission field for me is because Usually someone's family member or a friend of a friend or so I have so many friends our

Church of Christ and so there have been instances where I had a relationship or a friendship with somebody that attends the

Church of Christ and so eventually that turned into Them calling their elders and us sitting down and just hashing it out as much loving way as possible

And I'm so grateful for that because I remember one of them This probably nine years ago brought up this verse and I just remember thinking man,

I just I need to keep reading and studying the Bible and I love this verse now because I do feel like I have a better grasp of the context and so something else

I know I'm giving you a lot here to take a consideration But Church of Christ historically have a different method a different hermeneutic a different exegesis

So I wanted to tell you what that is And this kind of stems out of their Baconian philosophy where the rational mind is preeminent

You can you can have a clean slate no presuppositions and Something that they go by the acronym is

CINI C E N I and it's really just three points And it's you got to understand direct command approved example and necessary inference

I come back to say Okay, that doesn't really in capture the grammatical historical method of interpretation

And so what I mean is we do look at exit we do look at the original language We look at definition of terms.

We do look at context and they would say yes to that But I think a fatal flaw here and this kind of pertains to this verse is you got to understand prescription and description right what is indicative and What's a command ultimately?

And so how this plays out here is the book of Acts is a narrative book

You got to treat it like that when you look at the epistles These are doctrinal letters given to the church

And so you don't interpret the doctrinal letters in light of the book of Acts you have it backwards

You read the book of Acts and you see what Paul is teaching how Christians are supposed to understand this in light of the letter

So I'm saying that's important and you'll see this crossover here in a second. Sure I love what you did

You read the whole verse because typically that's good This gets quoted as why do you wait rise and be baptized and wash away your sins

Okay, but Calling on his name Eli there's a lot of things going on here in the context.

This is not the Apostle Paul speaking This is Ananias Ananias earlier in the context when you look back to Max chapter 9

I think it's 915 where the Lord appears to him saying hey you go and prepare for Saul of Tarsus because he is a chosen vessel of mine

Okay, cuz Ananias was like, I don't know if this is a good idea because he's literally killing and persecuting

Christians God's like I got a sovereign plan for this. Okay, and so what you see here in this verse just on Broad scope as we get closer is

Ananias is being faithful to the gospel proclamation in the Great Commission I'm just saying that he's being faithful here.

Okay, and so we need to ask the questions How what did he mean how did the

Apostle Paul understand what he means? And so what I'm getting at is rise and be baptized.

I do think that is talking about water baptism, especially with Matthew 28 and the Great Commission of mine wash away your sins calling on his name

So washing away your sins is qualified by calling on his name now the

Apostle Paul goes into great detail what it means to call upon the name of the Lord or to Confess Jesus as Lord in Romans chapter 10

This is a correct move Paul's about to interpret for us what he would have understood Ananias to be saying and so in in Romans chapter 10 verse 9

Paul says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead

You will be saved for with the heart one believes and his present tense

Justified and with the mouth one confesses and saved and then he goes on to quote from the Old Testament He says for everyone who calls on the name of the

Lord shall be saved Okay. Now, I know we got other verses, but this is so good if we just actually just sit in this

Paul is telling us that if you confess Jesus as Lord now, I've had church crosses

Well, it says with your mouth and we would say yes, but definitions are so important if you look up the word

Confession confessing. This is a transformed heart of worship that Manifests itself not with not only what you say, but how you live the rest of your life

So there's something more fundamental with confessing It's a matter of the heart and so the point is is if you confess

Jesus as Lord that he's the risen Lord Then you are present tense saved according to the

Apostle Paul Now, why is that important because if you go back to Acts 22 16

Eli I think this is a defeater not only for Church of Christ, but also

Roman Catholicism Eastern Orthodox any baptismal regeneration I just I think this is a defeater and obviously there would be much debate over this

But Paul confessed Jesus is Lord before his baptism Hmm, that's huge because the

Church Christ most people say well Paul confessed Jesus is Lord at his baptism and it'll say acts 22 16

I'm like, okay So if we can show that he actually confessed Jesus before his baptism and that doesn't work

He's simply demonstrating his faith when he does get baptized and look with me at verse 8 Paul answered who are you

Lord? So let me pause so he's on the road to Damascus, right? He's persecuting Christians He wasn't seeking after God, but we understand no one seeks after God No, none's good and unrighteous, but it's

God who seeks us his own And so the Apostle Paul is a wonderful picture of that Yeah, so Jesus is in the

Shekinah glory of Curios, that's gonna be a key phrase here in a second

The the Shekinah glory of God is is right there in front of Saul of Tarsus and he's a

Pharisee of Pharisees He knows he is looking at God. He is looking at the divine

Lord And he says who are you Lord? And I think he's genuinely asking the question here

Then he said to me I am Jesus of Nazareth Whom you are persecuting now

Jesus of Nazareth is key because he knows Exactly who he's talking about the Apostle Paul earlier in Acts had a helping hand at it

You know a helping hand in the crucifixion probably earlier on and he was there With the the killing of Stephen.

He understands exactly who Jesus of Nazareth is And then he says now to those who were with me saw the light

But did not understand the voice of the one who is speaking to me. So now the Apostle Paul or Saul of Tarsus here

He is a fully informed conscience Shekinah of glory of God that he invokes the divine name

Curios and now he knows it's the Resurrected Jesus of Nazareth talking to him and he says and I said to him what shall

I do? Lord hmm, and so you can continue to build on this because Galatians chapter 1

He talks about how he received the gospel not from man, but from actually Jesus himself

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation We're gonna see later that he prayed or if you go look at the context

He prayed he did all these things that someone who is born again does and so my point is

Actually 216 what qualifies the washing away your sins. It's not the water baptism. It's calling upon his name