Acts 2:38 and the Apostolic Plan of Salvation
As taught in the Oneness Pentecostal tradition
How Oneness Pentecostals read Acts 2:38 as the apostolic pattern of salvation.
Among the Christian movements that emerged from early-twentieth-century Pentecostalism, the Oneness or "Apostolic" Pentecostals are distinguished not only by their doctrine of God but by a tightly defined account of how a person is saved. They call it the apostolic plan of salvation, and they locate it above all in a single verse: Peter's answer to the convicted crowd on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:38. Read as the church's first and definitive gospel invitation, that verse is taken to lay out in order the very steps by which a sinner enters into salvation — repentance, baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Oneness Pentecostals hold that this threefold pattern is not one option among several but the apostolic norm, the model the rest of the New Testament confirms and the church is bound to follow.
By the end of this lesson
- Reconstruct the Oneness Pentecostal plan of salvation as repentance, water baptism in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of tongues, drawn from Acts 2:38.
- Explain why the tradition reads the phrase 'for the remission of sins' in Acts 2:38 as expressing purpose, and how that differs from a causal or symbolic reading.
- Describe how Oneness Pentecostals use Acts 2:39 to argue that the apostolic plan is permanent and universally offered rather than a one-time exception.
- Show how the tradition harmonizes the faith-and-confession language of Romans 10:9-13 and Mark 16:16 with its baptismal soteriology rather than treating them as a faith-only alternative.
- Trace the doctrine to its primary sources in the early 'New Issue,' G. T. Haywood and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, and the later confessional statements of the United Pentecostal Church International.
- State plainly where the Oneness plan of salvation differs from the Trinitarian and faith-centered views held by most of Christianity, including most Pentecostals, without resolving the disagreement.
Scripture
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